Mara's Journey
by terrathrahn
Summary: Sometimes, the choices we make shape our futures in ways we never could have imagined. This story tracks the repercussions of one particular decision in Timothy Zahn's "Choices of One" on the life of Mara Jade, from "Return of the Jedi," through the Thrawn years, the "Hand of Thrawn" duology, and beyond. This is an expansion upon my earlier story "Mara's Choice."
1. Chapter 1: The Emperor's Hand

Part 1: The Emperor's Hand

Shortly before the Battle of Endor ...

Mara Jade listened with no small amount of incredulity as her master outlined his next assignment for her. _Darth Vader_ , _a traitor?_ Well, that made a certain amount of sense; Mara had never liked Vader, nor entirely trusted his loyalty to their master. Mara served the Emperor out of conviction and devotion—two qualities she'd never observed in Vader.

Yes, Mara could see Vader making a secret deal to overthrow the Emperor and usurp his throne; but that his partner in this treachery was Luke Skywalker, the young Rebel who'd helped Mara rescue Governor Ferrouz's family on Poln Major three years ago … on the face of it, it seemed ridiculous.

Mara bit her lip and considered. She hadn't made it her business to keep track of Skywalker over the intervening three years, but she'd heard the reports. And the rumors. The consensus among the members of the Emperor's court was that Skywalker had been responsible for destroying the Death Star at Yavin Four and killing tens of thousands of Imperial military and non-military personnel. If she'd known that at the time, she would have thought twice about saving him from Stelikag and his lackeys.

Perhaps, Mara considered ruefully, she'd underestimated the young Rebel during their encounter on Poln Major—she made a mental note to be more attentive the next time their paths crossed.

After explaining Vader's traitorous offer to Skywalker, the Emperor gave Mara her orders: _You will find Skywalker on the planet Tatooine_ , _his friend Han Solo has been captured by the criminal Jabba the Hutt_. _You will infiltrate the Hutt's palace and wait for Skywalker to arrive and attempt a rescue. When he does you will kill him_. _His death is paramount_ , _all other concerns are secondary_.

"Yes, my Emperor," Mara said aloud.

But the Emperor was expert at reading Mara, and he sensed her inner turmoil. _You hesitate_ , _my child_.

"Forgive me, exalted one. I had a chance to kill Skywalker once before, on Poln Major, and I did not. In fact, I intervened to save his life from a group of mercenaries."

 _Explain_.

And so Mara described her mission to rescue Governor Ferrouz's wife and daughter from Stelikag's mercenaries, how Skywalker had aided her efforts, and how she in turn had thrown him her hold-out blaster, and later opened a barrel of flammable liquid between him and the mercenaries, allowing him to escape. She felt the Emperor's growing censure as she spoke—he'd already chastised her after that mission for her "excessive sentimentality" in not eliminating Governor Ferrouz when it became clear he'd been compromised—and when she finished, she knew she had disappointed him. For a long moment, he said nothing, but he allowed Mara to sense his displeasure. Then, mercifully, his sense softened.

 _You were in error at Poln Major_ , he chided, _you know this_. _You have always suffered from an over-abundance of compassion_ ; _sometimes_ , _your softness has been to your benefit_ — _more often_ , _it has clouded your judgment and hampered you in serving my will_. _You knew Skywalker was a Rebel_ , _and therefore a threat to my order_ , _yet because he displayed admirable qualities_ , _you chose to overlook his transgressions_.

 _Child_ , _you must realize that not all those who oppose me are wicked and monstrous_ — _many of them are_ , _but many more are misguided and afraid_. _It is a tragedy that they are incapable of recognizing the benefits of my rule_ , _but in their deluded self-righteousness they would deny those benefits to every child of my Empire_. _Their concern for their fellow citizens is to their credit_ , _but in their zeal they would plunge the galaxy into anarchy_. _It is regrettable to_ _terminate_ _such beings whose only crime is misplaced conviction_ , _but it is a small price to pay for preventing general_ _chaos_. _Do you understand?_

"Yes, my Emperor."

 _Good_. _I forgive your error_ , _child_. _I know your intentions were good_ , _if likewise misplaced_ , _and you were not to know the danger Skywalker poses_.

"I will not underestimate him again, exalted one."

 _See that you don't_ , the Emperor replied with a hint of sternness. Then his voice grew kindly again. _I have great faith in you_. _Remember that you are the Emperor's Hand_ , _you will do what must be done_.

"I will, my Emperor."

 _Then go_. _Your Emperor commands it_ , with that, he severed the connection between them. Ten minutes later, Mara was in her personal scoutship, giving Kaythree the itinerary for Tatooine. She'd screwed up with Skywalker once—she wouldn't miss her chance at redemption.

* * *

 _So you have failed me_.

Outwardly, Mara knew she appeared no different than she had a moment ago, but she also knew her Emperor could feel her inward flinch at this rebuke. She'd been dreading this conversation from the moment Jabba the Hutt's officious protocol droid gave her a landspeeder and told her she was to remove herself from the Hutt's sight forever. All of Mara's diplomatic skill had been insufficient to persuade the corpulent crime lord to allow her to accompany him to the execution of Skywalker, Solo, and Solo's Wookiee companion Chewbacca. And whatever else you could say about him, Jabba was anything but weak-minded, so Alter Mind hadn't worked either.

 _I am disappointed_ , _Mara Jade_. _Disappointed indeed_.

 _I know_ , Mara replied, for once not bothering to vocalize her response. _Perhaps Jabba can deal with him_. She very much doubted that. She'd been preoccupied with her own problems when Jabba dropped the young Jedi into the rancor pit, but what little she had seen was enough to convince her that he'd grown significantly from the untrained boy he'd been on Poln Major. If she'd underestimated Skywalker, Jabba certainly would. For that matter, it seemed to Mara that Jabba underestimated the Alderaanian princess he'd chained up to his throne like a trophy. If she was being honest with herself, Mara suspected the execution at the Great Pit of Carkoon would go very badly for Jabba—perhaps it already had.

The Emperor, it seemed, harbored similar misgivings: _Do you seriously believe that?_ He paused, giving her the chance to answer, but only, Mara was sure, as a formality. When she said nothing, he continued. _Skywalker is of no immediate importance_. _Continue on to Svivren_. _We will discuss this when you return_ , with that, he broke the connection between them.

The details of Mara's assignment, she knew, would be waiting aboard her scoutship. She had a new mission, but, Mara silently promised herself, she would fulfill her old one, someday. Skywalker's death had merely been delayed, not averted.

* * *

Days later, Mara was gazing out the viewport of her room in the Imperial Palace, contemplating the Svivren mission. On the surface, it seemed to have gone perfectly, with the target eliminated and Mara making a clean escape. But since her return to Imperial Center, she'd begun having doubts. Eliminating the target had been almost trivially easy, even with one or two missteps along the way. Also, there were no signs of the ripples in the underworld which the death of a major scum-lord should have provoked.

Reluctantly, Mara came to the conclusion that she'd failed her Emperor again. Two failed missions one after the other—this was unacceptable.

She was just preparing to launch a thorough investigation of Imperial Intelligence files on her most recent target—and to hells with Director Isard's obstructionism—when her master contacted her again. And what he showed her swept all thoughts of Svivren aside.

 _Mara Jade_ , he said, _behold_ , _child_ , _what unfolds above Endor_.

Mara watched in confusion, then in mounting horror as Skywalker and Darth Vader battled before the Emperor's eyes aboard the second Death Star. At first they seemed intent on fighting each other, then they turned, and with a combined scream of pure hatred they charged the Emperor. Mara felt a brief shock of relief as the Emperor raised his hands and blasted the pair with blue lightning from his fingertips, but her exultation was premature. Skywalker and Vader shrugged off the attack and pressed forward, despite the Emperor's increasingly desperate pleas. They raised their lightsabers high … and brought them swinging down.

 _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_ , the Emperor snarled. And then nothing.

In that moment, Mara's universe exploded. She felt the Emperor's death, and the pain and anguish were so intense she felt they would sear away her very mind. She was disappointed when they didn't.

She lay facedown on the floor of her room for what felt like hours, grief and heartbreak and self-recrimination consuming her thoughts, feeding off each other, amplifying her misery with each passing second. She had failed her Emperor, and now he was dead because of her mistake.

Over and over again, his last words to her echoed in Mara's head: _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

Mara was in no state to resist when stormtroopers working under the authority of Imperial Intelligence Director Ysanne Isard came to lock her in a cell on suspicion of involvement in the Emperor's death. For hours she sat there, near catatonic, the same thoughts running over and over through her brain: _must kill Skywalker_ , _could've killed him years ago_ , should _have killed him years ago_ , _saved his life when I should have killed him_ , _should have_ , _should have. All my fault_. _Must kill Skywalker_. _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

Eventually, that first thought began to override the others. Mara still had a mission in life, and she discovered if she concentrated on that, on her need to kill the man who'd killed her master, the misery and the self-loathing were muted to a background buzz. She could still feel them, gnawing away at the back of her mind like a nek worrying a piece of meat—perhaps they would always be there—but they no longer overwhelmed her.

With her mind fixed on her new mission, Mara found she was able to concentrate again. She wouldn't be killing anyone locked up in Isard's cell; wouldn't be doing much of anything.

Mara began the long, agonizing work of pulling herself together and planning her escape.

* * *

Several hours and numerous close-calls later, Mara boarded a transport leaving Imperial Center. Knowing Isard, this would not be the end of Mara's troubles with Imperial Intelligence. She'd eluded the Director's agents for the moment, but they would be on her trail for a long, long time.

Mara would have to lie low, disappear, cut as many ties to her old life as possible. She probably would have done that anyway—without the Emperor, Mara's place in the galaxy was gone forever. No one else—save for the traitorous Vader—had known of her position, and those who suspected, like Isard, now thought she was the traitor. There was nothing left in the Empire for the personal Hand of a dead Emperor.

Very well, she would lie low, and try to make a new life for herself. The pain and the misery would always be with her, Mara knew, and also the blame. _You failed to kill Skywalker on Tatooine_. _You_ saved _him on Poln Major_. _The Emperor's death is_ _your fault_.

Eventually, the pain, the misery—despair even—would fade, but the guilt of her own failure would burn in her breast forever. She would have to find a way to live with that.

The attendant accepting passengers aboard the ship told Mara seats cost extra. She'd made do with far less in her life as the Emperor's Hand. She would survive this, too.

Just before entering the airlock, Mara turned to bid farewell to the world she had called home for almost her whole life. But that had been when she was the Emperor's Hand. With him dead, she was just Mara Jade. It would be interesting to find out exactly who that was.

This was her task now, and Mara would devote herself to it as zealously as any mission assigned her by the late Emperor. It might take her years or even decades to build a new life, but Mara Jade would persevere.

She would not hunt down Luke Skywalker immediately. But sometime during her wanderings, Mara's path would cross with his again—she was convinced of it. Then, Mara would kill him, and maybe, just maybe, she would be able to forgive herself for not doing so before it was too late.

To be continued …


	2. Chapter 2: First Meeting

Part 2: First Meeting

Five years after the Battle of Endor …

Mara gazed down at the body of the man she hated most in all the galaxy. After five years, finally, Luke Skywalker was in her power.

What chance, she thought, that he should come to be so, after her employer Talon Karrde's adamant refusal to participate in Grand Admiral Thrawn's little Jedi hunt. A routine cargo mission, a sudden hunch prompting her to drop the _Wild_ _Karrde_ out of hyperspace for a nav reading, and there he'd been, trapped in his X-wing for all the galaxy like a birthday present with her name on it. Mara would have given a lot of money to see the expression on Skywalker's face when the stunbolt hit him, and all his prestige, all his power, all his training in the Force could do nothing to stop it. The very thought made her smile.

She'd rushed down to the medbay the minute her shift on the bridge was over. Skywalker was lying on the closest medical bed, dressed in a flight suit, sound asleep. Karrde was standing next to the bed, and seeing Mara tensed for trouble, but when she assured him she'd only come to have a look, he silently moved over to make room for her.

"So," she said, "how did it go?"

"Obviously it worked," he said, gesturing to the recumbent Jedi. "We chatted briefly about who he was, and how he came to be in this predicament. Meanwhile, Dankin was able to come up behind him and stun him. I think we can safely say the ysalamiri live up to the legend. Even at the last second, I half expected Skywalker to duck or go for his lightsaber, but …" He shrugged, again letting Skywalker's unconscious form speak for itself.

For her part, Mara didn't need this little demonstration to establish the truth of the ysalamiri's fabled Force-suppression powers. She had plenty of first-hand experience of their unique abilities in action, and been glad of it, if only for the way they suppressed her nightmares of the Emperor. She wasn't about to tell any of this to Karrde, though: she was loyal to Karrde, and grateful for the respect, generosity, and kindness he'd showed her since she came to work for his organization, but her past was none of his business.

"I gave him your name, and told him you were the one responsible for our timely rescue," Karrde said. "He didn't recognize you."

"No," Mara said, "he wouldn't." It figured Karrde would try to use this opportunity to question Skywalker about his connection to Mara. Of course it hadn't done him any good—Skywalker had no idea who she was. Not that it mattered.

Karrde hesitated, probably wondering whether to press the point. If so, he apparently thought better of it. "I had the med droid dose him with TriQuenthal," he said, as if the most recent exchange had never happened. "He'll get a dose every eleven hours until I'm ready to wake him."

"Why bother waking him?" Mara said. "Either keep him dosed until you hand him over to Thrawn, or drop us out of hyperspace and dump him out an airlock." _Better yet_ , she thought, _let_ me _dump him_. But she didn't say it aloud.

"Now, Mara, you know my reasons for wanting to stay out of this Skywalker mess," Karrde said soothingly.

Mara gave a quick nod. She did know, and what was more, they were good reasons. The ongoing war between the remnants of Palpatine's Empire and the fledgling New Republic was a nasty affair—just the sort of chaos, she reflected sourly, which her master had hoped to abolish with his new order. Under any other circumstances, she would have applauded Karrde's decision to keep himself and his organization on the sidelines. But … "Yes, I know," she said. "But like it or not Karrde, you're right in the middle of it, now. I'm sorry for getting you here, but all the apologies in the universe won't put Skywalker and his droid back out in space where we found them. You'll have to decide what to do with them."

Karrde eyed her coolly. Mara had more than enough experience with him to know it meant he was in the midst of some deep consideration. "Yes, I suppose I will. I take it you have a few suggestions?"

"You've heard my suggestions," Mara said. "Either hand him over to Thrawn and take the thirty thousand, or kill him now and be done with it."

Karrde nodded, still thinking carefully. "Would you care to go into detail?"

"No." Mara knew Karrde was curious about her hatred of Skywalker—of course he was, information was his obsession. He would just have to go on wondering.

Karrde's face grew stern. "All right, Mara. In that case, I'll have to make this decision with what I have already. You understand my position."

"I do," Mara said. "What is your decision?"

Karrde blew out his breath and looked away. "I haven't made it yet. It depends in part, upon what Grand Admiral Thrawn wants from him so badly."

"And how do you propose to learn that?"

"The simplest way of all," Karrde said. "We'll ask Skywalker." He must have caught something of Mara's look, for he added, "No, I don't propose to wake him up now. We'll wait until we're on Myrkr and we can find a way to keep him … suitably contained."

 _No_ , Mara wanted to rage, to lash out. She wanted to draw her blaster and shoot Skywalker dead on the spot, the way she should have done years ago. With a supreme effort, she suppressed the rising tide of anger. "Do you really think Skywalker will be able to tell you anything about what the Grand Admiral is after?"

"Perhaps not. But we lose nothing by trying, and it will give me a few more days to consider, and see if I can't think my way out of this problem."

Mara bit back a response, knowing it would do no good.

"And until I _have_ made my final decision, Mara," Karrde added warningly, "I want Skywalker and his astromech to remain alive and unharmed. Understood?"

Mara made her expression go blank. "Understood."

She turned away from him to look back down at Skywalker. It was odd, Mara thought, as she took in his features. His face was seared irrevocably into her memory, but this was the very first time she'd seen it up close. She'd been across a large underground bunker from him on Poln Major, and halfway across Jabba's Palace on Tatooine the only other times she'd seen him in person. The two times she'd failed to kill him.

She'd seen plenty of his countenance on news reports and over a thousand historical documentaries already, not to mention a host of bad holodramas, but stills and holovids could never capture the true essence and character of a person's face. Mara was slightly disconcerted to discover that up close and in person, Luke Skywalker looked serene and also—even more disconcertingly—very fragile.

She looked away from his face and instead focused on his belt, on the lightsaber lying at his side. She reached over and unclipped the weapon, taking it in her hand and holding it up in front of her eyes. The lightsaber he'd had at Jabba's. The lightsaber with which he'd killed her Master.

"Mara?" She turned to find Karrde gazing at her questioningly. "I never figured you for a connoisseur of exotic weapons."

"You'd be amazed what you pick up on the fringe," Mara said, fastening Skywalker's lightsaber to her own belt. To herself she ruefully added, _And what you lose_ , picturing her lightsaber, lost to her well before she'd fallen in with Karrde and his organization. "Anyway," she added, "you can't exactly leave it with Skywalker. Even without the Force, he'd be far too dangerous with it."

"I'm sure he would," Karrde said.

"Good, then I'll just hold onto it until you decide what to do with him. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off shift and in need of a couple hours' sleep. Something tells me the next few days are going to be highly eventful."

Karrde had enough respect for his people to leave it at that—it was one of the reasons Mara remained loyal to him. He said nothing as she walked out of the medbay and off in the direction of her cabin.

He trusted her not to take out her revenge on Skywalker behind his back, and much as she yearned to dispatch the arrogant Jedi and be done with it, she could not betray that trust. Skywalker would live for now, because Karrde wanted it that way—but somewhere along the way, Karrde would make his decision and the situation would change.

Twice before, Mara had had a chance to kill Luke Skywalker, and failed. Now the universe had delivered her a third opportunity. She was damned if she was going to waste it.

* * *

Much to Mara's disgust, Karrde insisted on letting Skywalker wake up once they were on Myrkr so he could ask the Jedi what the Imperials wanted with him. Mara acceded to this decision with as much good grace as she could muster.

As long as she was barred from killing Skywalker outright, Mara took it upon herself to be on guard when he woke up. She sat in a chair, watching as he stirred and lifted his head, probably taking a look out the window of his stateroom. "Finally awake, are you?"

He shifted on the bed to look at her, and Mara felt a bitter satisfaction his evident bewilderment. Obviously he'd discovered the effects of the ysalamiri's Force-suppression field. "That's right," she said. "Welcome back to the world of mere mortals."

She watched as the confusion on his face deepened, and then grew into an expression of horrified realization as he began to register exactly how helpless he was. "Don't like it, do you?" she said. "It's not easy to suddenly lose everything that once made you special, is it?"

With obvious effort, Skywalker pulled himself up into a sitting position. Mara brought her hand down to her lap and laid it on the handle of her blaster. "If the purpose of all this activity is to impress me with your remarkable powers of recuperation, you don't need to bother."

"Nothing so devious. The purpose of all this activity is to get me back on my feet." Despite these words, he remained seated and showed no inclination of attempting to stand just yet.

He looked up and for the first time in almost a decade, Mara looked Luke Skywalker directly in the eyes. She'd wondered idly whether he would recognize her from that one shared glance on Poln Major, or perhaps from having seen her at Jabba's palace. Apparently not.

She met his gaze without flinching. If he thought he could rattle her with just a look, he had another think coming. "Don't tell me," he said, "let me guess. You're Mara Jade."

"That doesn't impress me, either. Karrde already told me he'd mentioned my name to you."

"He also told me that you were the one who found my X-wing. Thank you."

Mara had managed to keep a tight leash on her temper so far, but at this she felt a quickly suppressed flash of anger. "Save your gratitude. As far as I'm concerned, the only question left is whether we turn you over to the Imperials or kill you ourselves." _Enough of this nonsense_ , she thought. She got a firm grip on her blaster and stood up. "On your feet. Karrde wants to see you."

A petty part of Mara had hoped distantly Skywalker would still be too weak from the lingering effects of the TriQuenthal and from having his access to the Force unceremoniously cut off. However, he managed to get himself to his feet, and if he stood a little unsteadily, he was in no immediate danger of falling over, either.

"I can't say that either of those options sounds appealing," he said. Mara had envisioned this scene tens of thousands of times, daydreamed about it, spent many sleepless nights mapping out every last detail. Skywalker's behavior was unlike anything she'd expected—she'd thought he would be angry, or arrogant, or perhaps that he'd plead for mercy. Instead he seemed to be taking things in stride; maybe he was afraid, but he remained calm, not letting the fear overwhelm him. It goaded Mara even further.

She moved toward him, so close that they were within arm's reach of each other. She raised her blaster and took aim at a spot just under his left eye. "There's one other one," she told him. "You try to escape … and I kill you right here and now." _Just try it_ , she begged silently, _you'll never get a better chance to escape than now_. _Make your move_ , _and then I get to undo my biggest mistakes and finally put the past behind me_.

He wasn't going to take it, she could see that in his face, in his body language. Mara burned with the desire to blow his head off, right here and now, and to hell with Karrde and his dilemmas—Skywalker had never destroyed his life, after all. _I should have killed you the first time I saw you_.

With an effort, Mara lowered her blaster. "Move," she said. "Karrde's waiting."

* * *

The ensuing meeting went very badly from Mara's perspective. Skywalker could tell them nothing about what the Empire wanted with him, other than the interesting fact that apparently they had also made multiple attempts to kidnap his sister as well. Karrde adamantly refused to make a final decision on Skywalker's fate until he knew more about what Thrawn wanted with him, and so back into the stateroom he went for the time being.

And then, to make matters worse, Fynn Torve returned from Abregado-Rae without the _Etherway_ , hitching a ride aboard—of all the ships in the galaxy—the _Millennium Falcon_ , flown by Skywalker's best friends and comrades, Han Solo and Lando Calrissian. And since Karrde still refused to come to a decision, he had Mara move Skywalker out of his stateroom and into the number four shed, just next to where they'd previously stashed his astromech droid.

Of course, it didn't stop there. A few hours after Solo and Calrissian arrived, the Imperial Star Destroyer _Chimaera_ appeared in system, and they received a personal message from none other than Grand Admiral Thrawn himself, announcing his intentions to harvest more ysalamiri and have a chat with Karrde about the possibility of acquiring capital warships. Karrde insisted on hiding Solo and Calrissian as well, and Mara again reluctantly acquiesced.

Karrde ordered Mara to hide Skywalker's lightsaber among the resonator cavities in the number three shed, just to be sure Thrawn's people wouldn't be able to detect it somehow. As she made her way through the compound, Mara seriously considered stopping in the number four shed and putting an end to Skywalker once and for all. One stroke with the lightsaber would be all it took, and it would be fitting to cut him down with the same weapon he'd used to kill the Emperor.

Her burning desire to kill Skywalker warred with her loyalty to Karrde and some other emotion she couldn't pin down. Before she could decide between them, Mara saw one of the organization's two Skipray blastboats lifting off from its hangar. For a moment she thought this must Karrde's doing, though for what reason she'd couldn't fathom. Then she felt a horrible certainty rising up within her.

She checked the number four shed, and discovered that, just as she'd suspected, Skywalker and his astromech had somehow escaped.

She ran all the way to the hangar and had the second Skipray in the air in under two minutes. She'd promised herself over and over she wouldn't allow her next chance at Skywalker slip through her fingers. _I've made too many mistakes when it comes to Skywalker already_. She wasn't about to make another.

She closed in on him quickly. Skywalker was good in a fighter, but he obviously wasn't familiar with Skiprays, and that gave her just the edge she needed. She closed in behind him, her mind focused like a pinpoint laser on bringing him down and nothing else.

That was her mistake. Abruptly, Skywalker cut his forward momentum and throttled forward, apparently going for some variation of a Koiogran turn. Not a bad idea, but he'd flown too close to the forest canopy, and the maneuver took him crashing through the trees.

And with a lurch, Mara realized that she was too close to Skywalker's tail. She wrenched at the controls with all her strength, but by that point it was too late to stop her Skipray from following Skywalker's down through the trees towards the forest floor.

* * *

Hours later, with both blastboats mangled beyond their ability to repair and Imperial scout troopers snooping the crash site, Mara found herself tramping through the forest toward Hyllyard City with Skywalker and his astromech in tow. She'd come close—so close—to finally killing Skywalker and setting off on her own, but he's promised her a secure line of communication with Karrde, by way of the astromech and its counterpart link with Skywalker's X-wing. He also pointed out that the droid's sensors might be able to warn them of danger, even with the ambient vegetation cutting down the sensor range.

That night, after they'd set up camp, Mara was putting up with Skywalker's inane conversation and her own misgivings about the mess she'd gotten herself—and by extension, Karrde, Aves, Chin, Dankin, Lachton, Wadewarn, Ghent, and the rest of the organization—into, when she spotted a shadow moving towards them through the trees. A moment later, the astromech let out a chirp of warning, and Skywalker made some inane comment about it having picked up something. Mara activated her glow rod and found herself staring directly at a full-grown vornskr creeping up on Skywalker, teeth bared, whip tail swishing gently back and forth, ready to strike.

The canine predator paid no attention to either Mara or the light from her glow rod. She waited while it advanced a little closer to Skywalker, then dropped it with a headshot. After waiting to make sure the vornskr was in fact dead, and checking the area to make sure it hadn't brought any friends along, Mara turned her glow rod back off. "Awfully good thing we have your droid's sensors along."

"Well, _I_ wouldn't have known there was any danger without him," Skywalker said, and then added, "Thank you."

"Forget it."

Skywalker took the hint and dropped the subject, though a minute later, he was questioning her on a point of vornskr biology. At last he apparently tired of the conversation and settled in to sleep. For her part, Mara swallowed a stimpill, and settled into consideration of her current predicament.

Grudgingly, she acknowledged to herself that there was a lot more to Luke Skywalker than she'd given him credit for. She should've known that already, of course—it must have taken something extraordinary to allow him to kill the Emperor. She felt a dull stab of pain at the thought—it was a familiar sensation for her by now.

Whatever it was which had allowed Skywalker to prevail over her master, Mara resolved she would find some way to discover it, before she killed him.

Funny, she had now saved his life three times; from Stelikag's mercenaries on Poln Major, from a lingering death in deep space, and now from a prowling vornskr. _Master_ , she thought wryly, _it seems I'm doing a very bad job of following your instructions where Skywalker is concerned_.

But if another vornskr decided to make a meal out of Skywalker, Mara would see for it as well. She wasn't going to let the vornskrs kill Skywalker. Neither would she let Thrawn have him, for whatever purposes the Grand Admiral had in mind.

No matter the delay, in the end it would be no one else but Mara Jade who ended Luke Skywalker's life. It wouldn't undo the damage he'd done when he'd snatched Mara's life away, but it would constitute some small modicum of justice. It wouldn't undo Mara's mistakes in failing to kill him on Tatooine or saving his life on Poln Major, either, but personally meting out this delayed justice would go some way towards correcting them.

* * *

By the third day of their trek, Mara had shot yet another prowling vornskr off of Skywalker's back. Once she'd made up her mind not to let the vornskrs have him, she found she took a certain vicious satisfaction in stopping them from depriving her of her vengeance.

That vengeance was still yet to come, though, as Skywalker's continued existence remained more an asset to Mara than a liability. His trick with the coded messages between his starfighter and his astromech had paid off. They'd received a message from Karrde, advising them that there was a group of stormtroopers laying wait for them in Hyllyard City, and suggested they try to throw the Imperials off by having Skywalker play Karrde's loyal employee chasing down a rogue associate—played by Mara.

From a strictly logical perspective, it made sense, but Mara flat out refused to put herself under Skywalker's power to that extent. The sky was clouding over and it was time to set up camp for the night, so they put that conversation aside for the moment.

Skywalker fell asleep almost immediately, leaving Mara to set up camp for them all by herself. Before she could get started, the astromech trilled a warning, and a wild vornskr leaped onto Mara's back.

She blacked out for a few seconds, and when she came to, she was pinned under the vonskr. It was not sinking its claws into her just yet, which was odd, but a moment later, Mara realized the reason for its distraction. From close by she heard a blood-chilling howl, a vaguely familiar sound, but not, she was sure, one native to anything on Myrkr.

That was it! The cry of a krayt dragon, from Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine; she'd listened to a recording of the sound in preparation for her mission to Jabba's palace. She didn't have time to give the repercussions any further consideration; the krayt dragon call had temporarily distracted the vornskr, but it would soon turn its attention back to tearing Mara to pieces unless she did something to dispatch the beast quickly. She grunted out a passable approximation of a combat yell and flipped onto her back so that she was now staring up at the vornskr. She reached up with her hands and grabbed its throat, doing her damnedest to strangle the beast.

She realized quickly she wasn't getting very far. However, Skywalker and his droid took the opportunity to launch into a series of ridiculous flailing tactics which, while doing little to get rid of the vonskr, at least kept its attention off of Mara.

At last, Skywalker's astromech caught the vornskr's whip tail in its grasping arm. The droid's grip lasted a mere couple of heartbeats, but that was enough time for Skywalker to duck under the whip tail and snatch his lightsaber from Mara's side. It took great effort on Mara's part to keep from protesting this move, but her survival instinct, her pragmatic judgment, and her lingering weakness from the vornskr's initial attack all overrode her objections.

Skywalker rolled out of the way of the vornskr's freed whip tail, and then began … swatting at its nose with his lightsaber. After several moments of this, the vornskr jumped off Mara and lunged at Skywalker, at which point he neatly cut the creature in half.

"About time," Mara said. Unfortunately, one half of the dead vornskr had fallen on top of her. The stench was overpowering—not as bad as some smells she'd had the misfortune to come across, but bad enough to be going on with. On the positive side, the creature was not so heavy that she needed Skywalker's or his droid's help in getting it off. "What in blazes was that stupid game you were playing?" she asked, pushing herself up on one elbow.

Skywalker was breathing hard, but he still had on that painfully earnest expression of his. "I didn't think you'd like your hands cut off if I missed."

She sat up and he took a step back, proffering his hand to help her to her feet. _Dream on_ , _Jedi_. Mara waved him away, then got onto her hands and knees and from there pulled herself up into a standing position. It was hardly the most graceful method of standing up, but it gave her the opportunity to draw her blaster out of Skywalker's line of sight, so that when she turned to face him, she had the small satisfaction of seeing the quick flash of surprise on his face as she leveled it at his torso. "Just drop the lightsaber and move back."

Skywalker sighed and shook his head as if hard put upon, but he did as she'd instructed.."I don't believe you. Or didn't you notice that Artoo and I just saved your life?"

Mara stooped to grab the lightsaber, making sure to keep the blaster in her other hand trained on Skywalker. "I noticed," she said. "Thanks. I figure that's my reward for not shooting you two days ago." _If I'd shot you as I should have eight years ago_ , _or even five years ago_ , _I'd never have ended up in this mess_. "Get over there and sit down."

Skywalker asked to tend his droid, and Mara had no objection. The little astromech had lost a couple of arms during the fight with the vornskr, but Mara wasn't paying enough attention to judge the extent of the damage. With the situation back under control, she was able to turn her attention to salving the scratches on her arms from the vornskr's claws. The salve stung, and Mara was very slow and careful with its' application.

Skywalker commented on the astromech's status, and Mara glanced at him to respond. Then she stopped and took a closer look. She'd realized on some level that the vornskr had scored a hit on Skywalker's face with its whip tail, but for the first time now she got a good look at the damage done to his cheek and his forehead. "He got you good, didn't he?"

"I'll be all right," Skywalker said, gently probing his injury.

"Sure you will. I forgot—you're a hero, too."

Mara went back to treating her own wounds, but she could tell Skywalker was still looking at her. The great and noble Luke Skywalker—ha! Suddenly, Mara realized she felt acutely uncomfortable. All right, he'd saved her life, and under normal circumstances, that would mean a great deal to Mara. But set against everything else he'd done to her, not to mention the rest of the galaxy …

At last, Mara's discomfort grew so unbearable she had to speak, "I said thanks already. What do you want, a medal?"

"I just want to know what happened to you," Skywalker said, not missing a beat.

Mara felt an instant surge of pure hatred, but it subsided as quickly as it came. After days of trekking through the Myrkr forest without sleep, topped off by a near-fatal vornskr attack, she no longer had the energy to sustain that level of anger. She felt more weary than anything else. " _You_ happened to me," she said. "You came out of a grubby sixth-rate farm on a tenth-rate planet, and destroyed my life."

"How?" He stared at her, his face puzzled and—worse—concerned.

"You don't have the faintest idea, do you?"

"I'm sure I'd remember you if we'd met."

 _Apparently not_ , Mara thought, but she didn't say it out loud. Instead, she said, "Oh, right. The great, omniscient Jedi. See all, hear all, know all, understand all. No, we didn't actually meet; but I was there, if you'd bothered to notice me. I was a dancer at Jabba's palace the day you came for Solo." No, she would not bring up their encounter on Poln Major, doing so would unnecessarily complicate the conversation, as well as exposing what was, to Mara, the most private and painful of her failures.

There was a pause as Skywalker mulled over what Mara had told him. "You weren't a dancer, though. That was only a cover."

"Very good. That vaunted Jedi insight, no doubt. Keep going; you're doing so well. What was I really doing there?"

"You were waiting for me," he said, after a moment's consideration. "Vader knew I'd go there to try and rescue Han, and he sent you to capture me."

The very thought almost made Mara retch. "Vader? Don't make me laugh. Vader was a fool, and skating on the edge of treason along with it. My master sent me to Jabba's to kill you, not recruit you."

He considered her words for a fraction of a second. "And your master was the Emperor."

"Yes. And you destroyed him." And for the first time since Endor, Mara told someone about her past, about her life as the Emperor's Hand. She also told him a little about the aftermath of Endor: how she'd been cut off from everything she'd had under the Emperor; how she'd spent four and a half years in the outermost back-rockets of the galaxy, mixing with the dregs of the dregs.

"I worked hard to get where I am, Skywalker," she concluded. "You're not going to ruin it for me. Not this time."

"I don't want to ruin anything for you. All I want is to get back to the New Republic."

"And I want the old Empire back. We don't always get what we want, do we?"

"No. We don't," Skywalker acknowledged, with a shake of his head.

"Here," Mara said, picking up the tube of salve and tossing it in his direction, "get that welt fixed up. And get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day."

* * *

It turned out to be an even busier day than Mara expected. When she and Skywalker emerged from the forest, they were indeed taken by a contingent of stormtroopers and escorted to Hyllyard City. Karrde had set up an ambush with the help of Solo and Calrissian—but the Imperials were prepared for trouble, and the plan only came off due to some over-the-top heroics on Skywalker's part.

Mara was helping assess the damage they'd taken when Aves approached and told her Karrde wanted them to return to the compound and begin the evacuation. It was the only thing they could do at this point.

She saw the necessity of the ambush, of course. It wasn't just a matter of Karrde looking out for her well-being; if the Imperials had taken Skywalker, Karrde and every member of his organization would soon be facing some very awkward questions about why they had tried to keep him hidden from Thrawn instead of turning him over immediately. Karrde would never have survived such questioning, and many of his associates would likely have died as well.

In Karrde's place, she would have done the same, but the upshot was that they'd ended up throwing in their lot with Skywalker and the New Republic. No doubt, part of Karrde's reasoning in sending her off with Aves was to get her out of the way and otherwise preoccupied while he let Skywalker fly off with Solo and Calrissian. She wasn't sure whether to resent Karrde's meddling, or be grateful.

Skywalker was gone. If not already, he would soon be well away from Myrkr, and out of Mara's reach. She was angry at losing him, but not as much as she'd expected. This was not like her previous failures—he'd already done the worst he ever could to her, and to her master's Empire. There would be no grave consequences to letting Skywalker escape her this time, as there had in the past.

True, she'd been robbed of her revenge, but only temporarily. She was not quite sure why, but Mara was convinced she and Skywalker would cross paths again, perhaps more than once. She would find him, and sooner or later, she would kill him.

To be continued …


	3. Chapter 3: Allies of Necessity

Part 3: Allies of Necessity

Five years after the Battle of Endor …

Time passed, and Mara did encounter Skywalker again, on a back-rocket spitball going by the name of Jomark. Instead of killing him, though, she came to recruit him to help her break Karrde out of imprisonment aboard the _Chimaera_. This necessitated extricating him from the clutches of an insane Jedi Master, Joruus C'baoth, and while Skywalker was willing enough to be extricated, the old rancor put up a terrific fight. Mara was still convinced leaving him alive had been a mistake.

As on Myrkr, Mara found herself having to work with Skywalker first to defeat C'baoth, then to rescue Karrde from the _Chimaera_. Their collaboration worked pretty well—a bit too well for Mara's peace of mind. Once again, they parted almost as allies.

And then, worst of all, he saved her from a disabled ejector seat after the _Katana_ battle. Mara stupidly ejected right into the path of an ion cannon blast, and was left floating without means of propulsion or communication with the outside universe, or even life support. No one told her directly who found her, but they didn't have to—who else could have located one tiny ejector seat in all that vast expanse of nothingness?

When Mara picked up Skywalker from his own damaged X-wing a few months earlier, it was with every intention of finally doing her duty to her master and correcting her previous mistakes. Much though she would've liked to attribute equally selfish motives to Skywalker, she couldn't make herself believe it. He'd saved her life again, and for no other reason than that it had been—in his mind—the right thing to do.

He'd saved her life for the second time, in full knowledge of what she was and what she intended to do. And unlike with the vornskr on Myrkr, she could not console herself that he'd been the one to get her into trouble in the first place. She'd gone to the _Katana_ under Karrde's orders, and it had been her own stupidity which placed her in the path of the ion cannon blasts. If not for Skywalker, she would have died out there, and had no one to blame but herself.

Mara was honest enough with herself to admit that Skywalker was a man of good intentions, and possessed many admirable qualities. She'd wanted to think otherwise, but she'd learned too much of him from personal experience.

As the Emperor had told her, otherwise good and well-meaning people could nonetheless be agents of unspeakable evil. It must have been so in Skywalker's case.

Whatever his intentions, he had killed the Emperor, and destroyed her life in the process. For that, he would die, by Mara's hand.

She was no less committed now than she had been those first few terrible minutes after the Emperor died. But now her determination was accompanied by a host of other thoughts, including the fact that she'd had several opportunities to kill Skywalker already, and hadn't taken them. She'd had good reasons for sparing him each time she saw him, and yet …

There were also the nightmares which had plagued her on and off for the past five years—nightmares of the Emperor's death, and his voice in her head, implacably commanding, _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_. They'd started up again after the evacuation of Myrkr, along with sporadic bursts from Mara's mostly untrained Force abilities, the whole thing adding yet another layer of confusion to the increasingly difficult tangle her life had lately become.

Now that her month of recuperation from exposure in the _Katana_ battle was at an end, Mara found she had free run of the Imperial Palace, or at least as free as any other member of the general public. How generous of the Rebel leaders, she often thought, to give her such generous access to the home which they themselves had taken from her.

It was her first time in the Imperial Palace since the Emperor's death, and at times Mara was attacked by an acute sense of loss. It was not, however, either as overwhelming nor as frequent as she might have expected. She'd thought returning to the Imperial Palace would trigger a cascade of painful, nostalgic memories of her life there before—instead it had been more like a trickle. She even tried to conjure up some memories, but most were so vague she found it impossible to latch onto them. The paralyzing pain she expected and perhaps to some extent desired manifested as little more than a dull ache most of the time. Maybe she'd grown so accustomed to the pain in the last few years, she was no longer capable of experiencing its full intensity except in brief flashes.

To her surprise and somewhat to her alarm, Mara found she often felt self-recrimination much more intensely than resentment. True, the New Republic had taken her life as the Emperor's Hand away from her, but they would not have been able to do so if not for Mara's mistakes in failing to kill Luke Skywalker—or even just standing back and allowing Stelikag's mercenaries to do the job for her—when she had the chance. _I saved Skywalker on Poln Major_ , _and he repaid me by destroying everything I cared about_.

Eventually, Skywalker's sister Leia Organa Solo came to visit Mara. Mara had slipped up in conversation with Organa Solo's aid Winter when she first regained consciousness, and the two of them had worked out that Mara was a former Imperial agent, though they hadn't come close to guessing the true nature of her position. Organa Solo wanted information that could help her New Republic in its war with Grand Admiral Thrawn, and Mara found herself offering what helpful knowledge she could, which was little enough.

Several things about her conversation with Organa Solo bothered Mara. First was the amount of trust the other woman apparently placed in her. Even after Mara told her about her old life as the Emperor's Hand, even after she told her that she was going to kill Organa Solo's own brother, the woman still treated Mara with compassion and trust.

When Mara related her intention to kill Skywalker, Organa Solo questioned if it was really Mara who wanted him dead. Organa Solo had been to Endor recently, and felt the lingering touch of the Emperor. Mara hadn't told her about the dreams or the voice, but nevertheless Organa Solo intuited some extent of the Emperor's continuing hold over her. She also spoke to Mara's own doubts about having failed to kill Skywalker during any of her recent opportunities.

More troubling than either Organa Solo's behavior toward Mara or the doubts she raised was the news she brought that Thrawn had gotten his hands on a group of Spaarti cylinders and was using them to churn out clone stormtroopers at impossible speeds.

The very thought made Mara shudder. All her life, she'd grown up learning about the horrors of the Clone Wars: the devastated planets, the massacred populations, the star systems thrown in to turmoil which only the arrival of Palpatine's Empire had quelled. Stories of terrible weapons like the Electro-Proton bomb, bio-weapons like the Blue Shadow Virus, and monsters like the awesome Zillo beast.

Since the Emperor's death and her own exile to the fringe, she'd heard more stories from the point of view of those who—whether out of loyalty, personal conviction, or circumstance—had been on the wrong side of the Republic's clone army, or merely caught in the crossfire. Stories of men who would kill, torture, and mutilate on command, without question or remorse. Even allowing for exaggeration, it seemed the process which heightened the clones' loyalty and obedience to their officers made them even more susceptible to committing atrocities on command. Some claimed the Jedi generals were the worst of all when it came to giving such orders—others insisted the Jedi did the most to minimize casualties, but that non-Jedi generals and commanders would sometimes order their clones to torture, mutilate, and execute civilians and prisoners of war on the flimsiest of pretexts.

She remembered the story of a Chadra-Fan who, as a child, had witnessed a squad of clones massacre her entire village for harboring an injured Separatist officer. From the Chadra-Fan's description, the troopers must been several months past their last resupply, as all of them were missing bits of armor, and half of them didn't have helmets. Mara still got chills remembering the mechanical tones of the Chadra-Fan—now a matriarch in her own right—relate how three clonetroopers systematically shot her parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, sisters, and baby brother, missing her only by chance. Two of those troopers had been without helmets, and even seen through the eyes of a nonhuman, the cold, implacable determination in their matching faces was unmistakable.

The Clone Wars had been the bloodiest, most destructive conflict in galactic history, a history which had seen numerous clashes between Jedi and Sith over the previous several dozen millennia. Surely Thrawn couldn't seriously propose to unleash such devastation upon the galaxy again. Except, of course he could; Thrawn thought like a strategist, a warlord—he factored consequences, but he thought in terms of military advantage or disadvantage. To a military mind like his, questions of collateral damage were of secondary importance unless they impinged upon victory conditions, and long term consequences after victory hardly factored at all.

The galaxy had barely survived one round of Clone Wars. How could it possibly suffer through a second?

Mara was interrupted in her brooding by a nagging tug at her intuition. There were footsteps in the corridor outside her room, and something about them was very, very wrong.

* * *

As she sat in her cell in the Imperial Palace's detention center, Mara silently cursed the day she ever stumbled across Luke Skywalker. The men she'd seen skulking around the corridors turned out to be a strike team sent by Thrawn to kidnap Organa Solo's newborn twins—presumably to hand over to that mad Jedi Master C'baoth. Mara was instrumental in foiling the attempt, but the surviving commando implicated her in giving them access to the Palace. Some mischief of Thrawn's no doubt, intended to neutralize her as a threat, and as with most of Thrawn's plans, it worked spectacularly. The officious Colonel Bremen of Palace Security happily placed Mara under house arrest pending further investigation.

All right, Mara had saved Organa Solo's infant children—and perhaps Organa Solo herself—from subjugation to C'baoth, a fate Mara wouldn't wish on the most depraved being in the galaxy. _I seem to be making a habit out of rescuing members of Skywalker's family_ , she thought wryly. She was glad she'd been able to help, but look where helping had gotten her.

 _Story of my life_. _I save Skywalker from Stelikag_ , _he goes on to kill the Emperor and bring my life crashing down around me_. _I save him again from dying in deep space_ , _he brings the wrath of Grand Admiral Thrawn down on my head_ , _Karrde's head_ , _and the rest of the organization's_ , _thus jeopardizing my life again_. _I save his sister_ , _niece_ , _and nephew from Thrawn's commando team_ , _I get locked up by Rebel security—and if they somehow find out I was the Emperor's Hand_ , _I can kiss any hope of ever getting out of their detainment goodbye_.

And, of course, every so often she was treated to another repetition of her Emperor's final injunction: _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

 _I will_ , Mara silently promised. _But I won't do it for you_ ; _I'll do it for me_ , _and for everything Skywalker has taken from me_. _And I'll do it for the mistakes I've made in not killing him sooner_. _I'll kill him for my reasons_ , _not yours_.

* * *

Several days later, Mara found herself tramping through another forest, accompanied this time not only by Skwayler and his droid, but also Solo, Solo's Wookiee co-pilot, Calrissian, and Organa Solo's blasted protocol droid.

On some level, she'd known what she was getting into when Skywalker showed up in her cell in Imperial Center, promising to break her out in exchange for taking him and his confederates to Wayland. She could have said no, could have stayed in her holding cell and let Skywalker and his cohort strike off on their own. It was not a desire to escape house arrest which convinced Mara to accept Skywalker's offer—she'd been in worse scrapes before—but the horrific thought of a new clone war had been eating away at her all this time. She was sure Thrawn's source must be the cloning facility in Mount Tantiss, and if that was the case, she might be the only person in the galaxy capable of eliminating his ability to produce his own personal army of ready-made killers. Mara had little love for the New Republic and even less for Skywalker and his friends, but if she had to work with them to prevent a renewed clone war, she would.

She didn't have to like it, though. She'd mostly avoided Skywalker on the way from Coruscant to Wayland—it hadn't been easy in a ship as small as Solo's _Millennium_ _Falcon—_ and she'd counted on their trip to Mount Tantiss lasting no more than a day at most. Unfortunately, it seemed Wayland was inhabited by garrals—big clawed predators who were attracted to the sound of a speeder bike's repulsorlift engines. Using the bikes would have meant having to fight off constant attacks by the creatures.

And so instead Mara found herself on foot, navigating yet another inhospitable forest with some of her very least favorite people in the galaxy, including the man she was most definitely going to kill, one way or another.

As she'd feared, she found it impossible to avoid Skywalker the way she had aboard the _Falcon_. She tolerated his company as best she could and found—to her undying disgust—that when she stopped thinking about who he was and what he'd done, it was actually pleasant. Mara refused to dwell upon the implications of that realization.

Eventually, she let him talk her into going through some exercises to help her relearn her long-atrophied Jedi training under the Emperor, and then to go beyond it. He'd estimated they had an hour until local night, and Mara had broken out in a sweat by the time the last rays of light faded off in the distance and Skywalker at last called a halt.

Mara sat down with her back to a log and took a sip from her canteen. Skywalker sat down beside her. It annoyed her that he placed himself just far enough away that she couldn't reasonably complain he was sitting too close.

"You push yourself hard," he said conversationally.

"The Emperor taught me always to push myself," Mara said. "I've back-slid quite a bit these last five years."

 _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

And there it was again, the Emperor's dying command, like the specter of his hand on her shoulder, insistently prompting her to take his vengeance.

"You must have been a formidable agent."

She wanted to hate him for saying that, but there was no condescension in his voice, no flattery, not even compliment. He was merely stating a fact.

"I was," Mara acknowledged, striving for an equally matter-of-fact tone. She didn't quite succeed.

"You certainly put on an impressive show on Poln Major."

Mara felt as if a loading crate had dropped on her head. _Dammit_. She'd hoped he'd never make that connection. A foolish hope, really. Skywalker and his sister were to perceptive by half. "When did you figure that one out?" she said, putting as much contemptuous sarcasm into her voice as she could manage.

"Our second night on Myrkr," he said placidly, apparently oblivious to Mara's agitation. Where was his vaunted Jedi sensitivity now? "I kept picturing your face, only younger, and then I remembered where else I'd heard about a lightsaber-wielding Imperial agent who wasn't Darth Vader. After that, it all fell into place."

Despite the stab of pain her memories of Poln invariably conjured up, Mara was curious. "That long ago? And you never mentioned it before?"

She couldn't see him very well in the darkness, but she thought she detected a shrug. "You didn't seem like you would be receptive to having this conversation while we were on Myrkr. After that, well, the next time we spent together was on our way to rescue Karrde from the _Chimaera_ ; it didn't feel like the right time to dig up old history."

Once again, curiosity got the best of Mara. "So what's changed since then? Why does now seem like a better time than before?"

"I don't know," he said. "It just felt like the right time to bring it up."

"Do you base all your decisions off of what the Force tells you?"

She'd meant it as a rhetorical question, but the pause that followed, and Skywalker's answer when it eventually came, indicated he was giving it serious consideration. "Interesting question. I suppose you could say so, at least, from a certain point of view."

"Never mind," Mara said. "Do Solo and the others know?"

"Shouldn't think so. They were more concerned with alien weapons caches and sabotaging orbital defense stations at the time. And anyway, I was the only one who actually got a look at you."

She flinched again at the memory.

"I never got a chance to thank you for saving my life."

Mara wanted to get angry, but instead she had to fight back tears as the recriminations washed over her all over again. If only she had known then—somehow, impossibly—what she knew now.

She couldn't restore the Emperor or his Empire, but she could still kill the man who'd taken them away from her.

 _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

Mara shook her head violently. _No_. _My choice, not yours_. _My choice, not yours_.

"Mara?"

Belatedly, Mara realized she'd never replied to Skywalker's comment. "I didn't know who you were, back then."

"You still saved my life."

Mara bit back a bitter retort. "Well, you've thanked me now. And while we're at it, I suppose I owe you my thanks for saving me back at the _Katana_. Well, thank you. There, that's that sorted out."

"Just like that?" He sounded amused.

"Just like that," Mara said. "And if you're smart, that's where you'll leave it, Skywalker. Of all the possible outcomes this conversation can have, this is the one that's most to your benefit."

"Maybe it's not my benefit I'm thinking of."

 _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

Mara stood up, she couldn't handle this. She mustered enough mental clarity to fire one last salvo, "Well you should be, if you intend to stay alive." She made a point of noisily brushing loose leaves and twigs off the seat and legs of her pants to cut off any response he might have made. "We'd better get back to camp."

* * *

Mara found herself growing increasingly agitated as they approached the Mount Tantiss air intake. Their little crew of would-be saboteurs had been augmented by a squad of Noghri death commands sent by Organa Solo, and Solo an the protocol droid were off talking to a group of the local Myneryshi, who doubtless also wanted to join the fun.

Mara was still mentally reeling from what one of the Noghri had told her: that Luke Skywalker was the son of Darth Vader. Skywalker had already told her the images of the Emperor's death she'd seen in her head these past five years were false. The Emperor was blasting Skywalker with lightning, when Vader stepped in, grabbed the Emperor, and threw him down the Death Star's reactor shaft, receiving a fatal dose of lightning in the process. Skywalker hadn't struck down the Emperor, though he had precipitated his death. And now Mara knew why Vader turned on the Emperor; he was protecting his son. That was also why the Emperor wanted Skywalker dead—not for anything he had or hadn't done, but as a last act of retaliation against his treacherous former apprentice.

Mara told herself this didn't matter. She was going to kill Skywalker for her reasons, not the Emperor's. But the permacrete-solid certainty of her mission, which had sustained Mara for five years, was shaken.

And somewhere in Mount Tantiss lurked Joruus C'baoth.

He frightened Mara—no, that was too mild a word for the feelings his touch upon her mind provoked. He terrified her.

 _I have seen you in my meditations_. _You will be mine_ , he'd said. Just the thought made her shiver.

In Mara's studies to become an Imperial agent, she'd encountered stories of the ancient Sith Lords, legends of their powers to direct, dominate, and even subsume the will of other sentient beings. Those stories scared her, even more than accounts of the Clone Wars. The thought of someone or something else controlling her so completely …

There was also Mara's brief encounter with C'baoth on Jomark. Here, she felt, was a man who would stop at nothing to exert his will upon anyone and anything that struck his fancy: destroying it or reshaping it as he saw fit, and all in the sincere belief that this was ultimately in everyone's best interest, including the person he was reshaping and destroying. That outlook, coupled with the sheer power necessary to make it happen, scared Mara as few things in the galaxy ever had. There was something about this reaction which bothered Mara, but she hadn't probed too closely into the reasons why.

Thank goodness for the ysalamiri field that blocked him from her mind. Unfortunately, the ysalamiri did nothing to block out imagination, and ever since he'd brushed her mind days ago, she'd felt as if those two horrible, pale hands were reaching into her head, right on the cusp of squeezing …

"You all right?" Skywalker was looking at her, with that almost comically overblown look of concern on his face.

Mara grabbed his hand. Her fear of C'baoth was threatening to overcome her, and loath though she was to admit it, Skywalker was the only one around whom she could rely on if she fell into the mad Jedi's clutches. She kept her voice low so Calrissian and Skywalker's astromech wouldn't be able to hear. "I want you to promise me something. Whatever it costs, don't let me go over to C'baoth's side. You understand? Don't let me join him. Even if you have to kill me."

A small part of Mara took perverse pleasure in seeing Skywalker's reaction, as if he were suddenly staring down the open maw of a space slug. "C'baoth can't force you to his side, Mara. Not without your cooperation."

"Are you sure of that? _Really_ sure?"

The sour look on his face was more than sufficient answer. "No."

"Neither am I. That's what worries me. C'baoth told me back on Jomark that I'd be joining him. He said it again here, too, the night he arrived."

"He may have been mistaken. Or lying." He didn't seem to believe that any more than Mara did.

"I don't want to risk it. I'm not going to serve him, Skywalker. I want you to promise that you'll kill me before you let him do that to me." She squeezed his hand for added emphasis.

Oh yes, she'd gotten to him with that one, all right. "I'll promise you this," he said, after an audible swallow and several seconds of silence. "Whatever happens in there, you won't have to face him alone. I'll be there to help you."

 _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_. Mara looked away from him. "What if you're already dead?"

It was stupid, and Mara knew it as soon as the words left her mouth. If she killed him before they faced C'baoth, he couldn't very well kill her to protect her from falling under C'baoth's sway. And yet …

 _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

"You don't have to do it," Skywalker said, as if he had heard Mara's thoughts. "The Emperor's dead. That voice you hear is just a memory he left behind inside you."

So perceptive and so naïve; Mara felt an unexpected, momentary flash of anger. "I know that. You think that makes it any easier to ignore?" _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

"No. But you can't use the voice as an excuse, either. Your destiny is in your hands, Mara. Not C'baoth's or the Emperor's. In the end you're the one who makes the decisions. You have the right … and the responsibility."

 _Oh great_ , _now it's entry cycle ethics_ , _is it?_ Mara was actually relieved to hear the sounds of Solo and the protocol droid returning, along with several others. She let go of Skywalker's hand and stepped back. "Fine," she said. "You spout philosophy if you want to. Just remember what I said."

 _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER_.

* * *

In the Emperor's throne room within Mount Tantiss, Mara stood over a fallen body and felt a mixture of satisfaction and relief. With a single stroke of a borrowed lightsaber, Mara had just defeated her enemy, and banished the Emperor's ghost from her mind forever.

"Thank you." A soft voice said from the vicinity of the viewscreen past the corpse. Skywalker's voice.

The body lying at Mara's feet was not Skywalker's but his clone's—Luuke Skywalker, a seemingly mindless automaton under the control of C'baoth. Mara had killed the clone just before it could strike down Skywalker. Even in fulfilling the Emperor's murderous directive, she'd managed to save Skywalker's life yet again. Figure that one out.

She took a step away from the fallen clone. "No problem." Through the Force, she thought she could feel a release of the buzzing pressure which had built up in Skywalker's mind when the clone first appeared. "Brain all clear now?" she said, half for confirmation, half taunting.

He nodded. "Yes. How about yours?"

Mara gave him a look, but this time, without any real malice in it. Although she hadn't had time to work out in detail how she felt about Skywalker, she knew their recent ordeal, capped by her defeat of the clone Luuke, changed things drastically. It wouldn't stop her getting in an occasional dig. Then again, he'd asked a fair question. "I did what he wanted me to do. It's over."

The two of them were not the only occupants of the throne room. Solo, Organa Solo, Karrde, and his two pet vornskrs, had come into the chamber midway through Skywalker's duel with the clone—they hadn't managed to stop either the clone or C'baoth, but they afforded an invaluable distraction, and Organa Solo provided the lightsaber with which Mara destroyed the clone Luuke. C'baoth hadn't taken their intervention kindly, and they'd all suffered the effects of his wrath.

While Skywalker checked on his downed sister, Mara turned her attention to the mad Jedi Master still standing in front of the Emperor's throne. She'd heard C'baoth's words when she and Skywalker confronted him—he boasted of having annihilated some Imperial officer's mind and then rebuilding it in his own image. During Skywalker's battle with the clone, he told her of his plans to extend his will throughout the galaxy, with herself, Skywalker, Organa Solo, and Organa Solo's children as his servants—willing, or otherwise. Set beside the devastation C'baoth's plans would unleash, a new round of Clone Wars seemed downright trivial. C'baoth's was a madness that had to be ended, here and now. And what better agent of its and his destruction than the woman who had once been the greatest assassin in the Empire?

"Come on Mara." That was Skywalker, of course, having assured himself of his sister's wellbeing, and now his only thought being to get all of them out of there before the explosives planted by Solo, Calrissian, and the others went off.

Still so idealistic, Skywalker. That was okay. Perhaps people like Skywalker, who only ever thought of helping others, served a useful purpose in the galaxy, after all. But if so, they needed to be balanced out by people like Mara—beings who could stare directly into the darkest corners of existence, and were unafraid to sully their hands when necessary. "Go ahead," she told him. "I'll be with you in a minute."

"What are you going to do?"

Purposeful or not, his idealism could be incredibly irritating. "What do you think? I'm going to finish the job. Like I should have done on Jomark." She'd let Skywalker talk her out of finishing C'baoth off at the time, but not again.

All this time, C'baoth's attention was focused on the fallen clone. Now, perhaps sensing Mara's intent, he looked up and fixed that chillingly direct gaze upon her. When he spoke, his voice was low and direct, "You will die for this, Mara Jade. Slowly, and in great pain."

"We'll see about that," Mara said, starting towards him. Not that she doubted his threat—she'd heard Palpatine speak in similar tones, at times when his fury was at its peak, and it invariably signaled the worst for the subject of that ire. But while Mara still feared C'baoth, she would not allow that fear to overwhelm her. She was Mara Jade, no longer the Emperor's Hand, but still an agent of justice. She would do what must be done.

C'baoth had closed his eyes, and seemed to be in deep contemplation. This puzzled Mara, and it took her a few crucial seconds to realize what he was up to—by which point, it was almost too late. In those seconds, a rumbling sensation began overhead and built up into a mighty crash. The ceiling above Mara's and Skywalker's heads split open and began raining stones onto them. Small stones, practically pebbles, but coming down at appreciable speeds and in massive numbers.

Mara heard Skywalker call out a warning. She held one arm up to protect her head while slashing around her with Organa Solo's lightsaber, trying to clear the rocks away from her. Her efforts were useless, and soon she had a growing pile of stones accumulating at her feet.

 _Right_ , _new plan_. Mara cast about for inspiration—and found it. She began making big sweeping cuts to the floor beneath her. Assuming the thickness of the floor ran to standard Imperial spec, and Mara would bet her last credit that it did …

She'd slipped almost instinctively into a laser-like focus, one of her earliest lessons under the Emperor's training, but she snapped back out of it at the sound of C'baoth's voice. "I am the Jedi Master C'baoth! The Empire—the universe—is mine." Then, for some reason, he turned his attention upon Skywalker, blasting the him with lightning, just as he had Solo and Organa Solo, just as he'd tried back on Jomark, and just as Mara had seen the Emperor do on rare but horrifying occasions. Skywalker fell to his knees under the assault, and just as he was beginning to stand again, one of the stones still falling from the ceiling caught him in the temple. He fell again, barely catching himself with one hand. Then C'boath once more unleashed the lightning, and Mara winced in sympathetic pain at the torment she could sense running through Skywalker. For good measure, an unseen hand snatched away Skywalker's lighstaber and flung it across the throne room.

To her surprise, Mara felt a burst of fury. Suddenly, it was as if the past nine years had melted away, and all she saw was a young man barely more than a boy, determined to protect other beings even when hopelessly outmatched. Now that young man writhed in agony before her eyes. Mara had fantasized about killing Skywalker innumerable times, but even in her darkest moments, she never contemplated torturing him as well. She'd executed numerous beings—there were some crimes for which death was the only possible punishment—but she never tolerated unnecessary cruelty against even the most hardened criminal.

"Stop it!" she cried. "If you're going to kill us, just do it."

C'baoth did just about the most awful thing Mara could imagine. He smiled. "Patience, my future apprentice. You cannot die yet. Not until I have taken you down to the Grand Admiral's cloning chamber."

 _Oh no_. As much as was possible still partially trapped in an accumulation of stones, Mara recoiled. Then it was as if her whole body seized up, and she barely got a single word past her lips, part question, part denial, "What?"

"For I have foreseen that Mara Jade will kneel before me. One Mara Jade … or another."

For a moment, Mara was paralyzed with dread. In that moment, C'baoth could have killed Skywalker; killed Karrde, Solo, and Organa Solo; could have reached out and suborned the minds of Organa Solo's twins to his will; could have unleashed a new Clone War upon the galaxy; and Mara would have been powerless to stop it.

But having put Mara in her place, C'baoth turned back to Skywalker. It was as if the old Jedi Master had decided to blame Skywalker, rather than Mara, for the death of the clone. Under other circumstances, she would have felt insulted at being so dismissed. Now, it gave her the few moments she needed to regain mastery over her fear. Her strategy was working—the stones at her feet were draining through the gashes she'd cut into the floor.

Skywalker was trying yet again to reason with C'baoth, and Mara could tell it was not just a bid to save his own life; even after everything they'd been through, some part of him still hadn't given up on the possibility that C'baoth could be persuaded to see the error of his ways. _No chance of that_ , Mara thought, but the longer Skywalker kept the Jedi Master talking, the more time Mara had to get herself out and make her move. She made a few more cuts while Skywalker and C'baoth traded words, and the stones at her feet drained away faster and faster.

It didn't take long for C'baoth to snap, pontificating on how he'd offered to let Skywalker capitulate to his rule, and even rule beside him. _How generous_ , a sardonic corner of Mara's mind noted. "Instead," C'baoth concluded, "you chose death."

"What about Mara?"

"Mara Jade is no longer any concern of yours. I will deal with her later."

And then, as if responding to some celestial cue, the last of the stones drained away, leaving Mara's legs and feet free. "No. You will deal with me _now_." _I'm coming for you_ , _C'baoth_. _You thought to control me_ , _but I will_ not _be_ _controlled_ ; _never again_. Mara wasn't sure herself where the last part of that thought had come from, but she didn't have time to contemplate it now.

Mara held her lightsaber above her head in a classic _loth-tar_ attack position, and charged C'baoth.

"No!" C'baoth turned towards Mara, anger etched in every line and angle of his face.

Mara was prepared for the blast of lightning that followed, and managed to catch it on her lightsaber. The sheer kinetic force of the blast caused her to stumble, but Mara rallied and continued her charge. She weathered another attack, and another—each one momentarily arrested her advance, but each time she recovered swiftly and pressed on.

Even as he lashed out with the deadly lightning, C'baoth was backing towards the Emperor's throne, seeming finally to have realized his danger.

All this time, stones were still pelting Mara from above, with C'baoth opening new fissures in the ceiling to follow her movements. Abruptly, the shower stopped, and C'baoth began flinging rocks from the pile around Skywalker at Mara's face. Mara shut her eyes and brought her right arm up to shield her face. Both these tactics proved partially effective, but Mara was still battered by the rocks, moving much faster than the ones which had been falling down on her. And with her eyes shut and her attention focused on protecting herself from the rocks, she couldn't spare the necessary concentration to find C'baoth. Perhaps she could manage a squint. It would be an incredibly risky move, but …

Abruptly, a new voice spoke into Mara's mind. _Keep your eyes closed_ , _Mara_ , _and listen to my voice_. _I can see; I'll guide you_. It wasn't C'baoth, or the Emperor, or even Skywalker—it was Organa Solo. Not long ago, Mara had mentally communicated with Organa Solo, giving her instructions to lure Thrawn's commandos into position so Mara could effect her family's rescue. Now Organa Solo was returning the favor.

"No! No! She is mine!" Apparently, C'baoth had overheard Organa Solo's communication, and wasn't happy about the other woman's intervention. Tough.

With Organa Solo's help, Mara pressed forward once again. It was slower going than before, but she was undaunted. _I'm coming for you_.

Mara was not clear on what happened next, concentrating as she was upon getting to C'baoth through the rockstorm. She heard the distinctive cackle/purr of Karrde's vornskrs, and the sound of their claws clacking on metal. For a split second, she flashed back to the vornskr that attacked her, Skywalker, and his R2 droid on Myrkr—but then she realized the sounds were not approaching her, but C'baoth. As if to emphasize the point, she heard another blast of lightning somewhere off to the side.

Up to now, Organa Solo's guidance had taken the form of directions which Mara followed. At this point, the other woman projected an image of C'baoth, backed up against the wall by the throne, having subdued one vornskr, and clearly preparing another blast to defeat the second. Though he was still hurling stones into Mara's face, his hands and his attention were directed away from her, and he was only a few short meters away.

Mara leaped, blowing through the barrage of stones and landing just in front of C'baoth. He turned toward her once again—too late. Mara dropped onto her knees and thrust her lightsaber up into the mad Jedi's chest. C'baoth screamed, and died. _Justice is served_.

Mara did not get an opportunity to recover herself, and what came next caught her completely by surprise. Even as C'baoth's body collapsed, it emitted a fiery blast of power which picked her up and threw her backward.

The last thing Mara felt as her consciousness slipped away was a sensation of floating, as if in the field projected by a repulsor-cushion. She also felt a profound sense of peace, and moreover, of safety, as if she knew that something—or someone—was taking care of her. And she felt a presence she knew well; _Luke_ …

* * *

Several hours later, Mara woke up in the _Wild Karrde_ 's medbay. She was in the same bed she'd seen Skywalker—Luke—lying in a few short months ago, after she rescued him and his X-wing from deep space.

Someone else was in the room with her. She tried to ask a question, but it came out as a croak.

"Mara, are you awake?" Karrde's voice.

"More or less," she said. "Are we …?"

"Outbound from Wayland," he confirmed. "We all agreed on the necessity of getting out of there in a hurry, after the charges in the cloning chambers went off."

"Then Mount Tantiss …?"

"Is destroyed."

"And C'baoth … he's dead, isn't he?"

"He is."

"I killed him."

"You did."

"Good," Mara said. "He deserved it." And with Mount Tantiss leveled, the threat of a new Clone Wars was gone from the universe. They'd won. But wait … she remembered those last few moments in the Emperor's throne room. She should have been killed by that blast when C'baoth died, or at least injured seriously enough to merit several days, or weeks, in a Bacta tank. "Luke saved me, didn't he?"

She could see Karrde by this point, standing at her bedside, looking down at her with almost fatherly concern. He twitched an eyebrow at her mention of Skywalker by his first name, but otherwise let it pass. "He did, he and his sister both. I don't wholly understand it, but apparently they used the Force to cushion your fall after C'baoth … exploded."

Poor Karrde. He wasn't used to dealing with matters so far beyond his understanding, and he obviously didn't like it.

"Are they still here?"

"No, they're all aboard the _Millennium Falcon_ , should be fairly cramped with four humans, two droids, one Wookiee, and a whole group of Noghri, but that's what they wanted. Skywalker, of all people, offered to come along with you aboard the _Wild Karrde_ , but I politely turned him down."

"Thanks, Karrde." Now was not the time to inform him that her attitude toward Luke had changed of late. It was probably for the best, anyway; some time away from him would give Mara an opportunity to work out precisely _how_ her attitude had changed. "Where are we headed now?"

"I don't know, Mara, are you sure you're up for a long conversation?" Karrde, obviously noticing Mara's wince, held up his hands. "Oh, it's nothing bad—in fact, it's very good—it's just complicated."

"Then I can take it," Mara said, pushing herself up into a semi sitting position. She could have taken bad news, too, if that was what there had been.

"I just got word from Aves a little while ago," Karrde said. "While we were on Wayland, my group, along with Mazzic's and several others, executed a raid on the Imperial Shipyards at Bilbringi, hoping to snatch a crystal gravfield trap array while the New Republic had Thrawn's forces occupied at Tangrene. Only the Republic attacked Bilbringi instead, and Thrawn was lying it wait for them, with our people caught right square in the middle of it all."

Mara winced again. "And that isn't bad news?"

"Actually, no," Karrde said, looking as if he couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "They managed to stay out of the crossfire for the most part, even got a Republic escort at one point. In any case, before the fight got too ugly, the Imperial forces left."

"They what?"

"They left. Without explanation, all the Imperial ships broke off and jumped out of the system."

"That doesn't make any sense." Mara shook her head. "It must be some trick of Thrawn's."

"You're not the only one to have that thought," Karrde said. "But it seems out of character for the dear Grand Admiral. The Empire is stretched for resources as it is. Surrendering one of the biggest shipyard complexes in the galaxy to the Republic like this is far too costly, especially when you throw in a CGT array along with it."

"There's something we're missing," Mara said.

"That much is obvious," Karrde noted, "unfortunately, we don't know it, and we likely won't find out for a long time." Mara could see that underneath his placid exterior, he was burning with curiosity. Information was Karrde's passion, he must be itching to know the real story of what happened at Bilbringi. "In the meantime, we will have to work with what we have."

"All right, so what's the plan now?"

"We're returning to Coruscant. Don't worry," Karrde said, apparently catching Mara's flash of alarm, "I extracted a promise from Organa Solo to get you immunity from any suspicion of involvement in the kidnapping attempt. I'm taking us in slow to give her a two-day head start. If she can't guarantee your safety to my satisfaction by the time we reach the system, we'll turn tail and make a run for neutral space."

Mara decided to wait until later to point out that given both her abilities and the little fact that it was her skin on the line, it was really _her_ satisfaction they should be holding out for; there was a more

pertinent point to address. "Why go to Coruscant at all?"

"Well now, it appears the Republic's political and military brass aren't waiting for the full report, and are already declaring Bilbringi—along with your own operation on Wayland—a decisive victory. I suppose they feel they have to show something for all their demoralized citizens, especially the ones on Coruscant who have had a rough time recently."

Mara made a rude noise.

Karrde chuckled. "Yes, I can see how you wouldn't have much patience for such concerns. I don't either, but in this case, they've presented me with a singular opportunity."

"How do you figure?"

"Well, as part of the force which helped win the Battle of Bilbringi, the smugglers' coalition I put together with Mazzic's group and Gillespee's and the others is in excellent standing with the New Republic leadership, despite the efforts of some individuals to downplay our involvement. The upshot is that there's no better time to get both the Republic leadership and the coalition members to a bargaining table to discuss a more permanent arrangement."

"You mean like that crazy proposal Solo brought to us on Myrkr, working directly for the New Republic to haul their cargoes? You know that will never work."

"Maybe," Karrde said, "but I've lived through a few too many 'nevers' in my time to give them unquestioning credence. In an ever-shifting universe, adaptability is a key survival trait."

He had a point, Mara reflected. There was a time when she never would have thought she'd see the death of the Emperor and the fall of his Empire, or herself reduced from one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy to a creditless refugee. And there was a time when she never would have thought she would one day let go of her hatred of Luke Skywalker. Come to that, there'd been a time when she never would have credited the boy Jedi from Poln Major posing a serious threat to the Emperor, whatever the circumstances.

"Well," Karrde said, oblivious to Mara's ruminations, "I'd better leave you to rest, you still need some time to recover from that shockwave."

"Thanks," Mara said, "I hadn't noticed." She instantly felt a stab of remorse and gave him an apologetic smile.

Karrde waved it off. "We can fill in the details later. Anyway, I'd better check in on Drang and Sturm; they're in even worse shape than you are, poor things."

He ducked out of the medbay to check on his vornskrs, leaving Mara alone with her thoughts. For the first time since her confrontation with the clone Luuke, she had an opportunity to consider the ramifications of everything she'd been through in the last few days. She'd put her past behind her when she killed the clone and fulfilled the Emperor's last command—now it was time to consider her future. For the first time in five years, she faced the prospect not with despair, but with dawning excitement.

To be continued …


	4. Chapter 4: A New Life, A New Galaxy

Part 4: A New Life, A New Galaxy

As the _Wild Karrde_ made its return to Coruscant, reports flooded in from various regions of the galaxy, and the reason for the Empire's retreat at Bilbringi slowly became clear. At first it was all rumor and propaganda, but reading between the lines of such accounts to sift out facts had been part of Mara's training as an Imperial agent.

On their second day out from Wayland, she announced with confidence that Thrawn was dead, or at least injured to the point of being unable to continue directing Imperial forces. Karrde was skeptical, and Mara had to admit a certain juvenile satisfaction when the official report of the Grand Admiral's death came over the Holonet a few days later.

She didn't talk much with Karrde or the rest of the ship's crew during the flight; Karrde, for his part, was steeped in drawing up proposals for his ridiculous Smuggler's Alliance, and Dankin and the others generally left Mara to herself when they perceived she had a lot to think about.

And Mara had a great deal to think about. She'd made a choice on Wayland, a choice which irrevocably severed her attachment to her old life as the Emperor's Hand. She'd not only given up her hatred of Luke Skywalker for destroying her life—she'd given up her long-held desire to have that life back. But so much of Mara's sense of self had been tied up in her identity as the Emperor's Hand. Giving that up confronted her with the question: who was she now? And what was she going to do about it?

* * *

A week after the _Wild Karrde_ arrived on Coruscant, Mara had an answer, of sorts, though it was nothing she could have predicted. She found herself in a small office in the Imperial Palace, on her first day as official liaison between the New Republic and the Smuggler's Alliance, still wondering how she'd let herself be talked into taking the position.

Of one thing she was certain, though: the Council report on Karrde's initial proposal for a working relationship between the Alliance and the Republic was mind-numbingly boring. One thing which hadn't changed when the Republic took over the reins of power from the Empire was the dry, long-winded bureaucratic bluster which went into such reports. Mara had grown accustomed to such dreary language in her capacity as an Imperial agent, but she never developed a liking for it.

She was delighted when a buzz at her door gave her an excuse to set down the document half read, but her relief quickly transformed into a mix of uncertain emotions when she opened the door to find Leia Organa on the other side.

Mindful of her new position, Mara graciously asked the other woman in and offered her a seat.

"I'm so glad you accepted the Council's offer to take this post," Leia said, once they were each comfortably settled in their respective chairs. "I can't think of anyone more qualified. You're going to do very well here, Mara."

"I suppose we'll find out," Mara said. She still thought the Smuggler's Alliance and its partnership with the Republic was unlikely to last the year. But this was her life now, she supposed she might as well try to make it work for as long as she could. Or maybe a little of Karrde's optimism was finally rubbing off on her. Or Luke's.

"I see you've also accepted my brother's gift."

Instinctively, Mara brushed her fingers along the hilt of the lightsaber strapped at her hip. Luke's old lightsaber, the lightsaber he'd gotten from Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine; the lightsaber he'd had with him on Poln Major; the lightsaber more recently wielded by the clone Luuke on Wayland. "Did you know he was planning to give it to me?"

"No," Leia said, "but now I see it, it makes sense. It suits you."

Though Mara would never admit it, she'd found herself thinking much the same thing. "Did you come by for a reason, other than to congratulate me on my new position and compliment my new accessory?" she said, and immediately felt angry with herself. That was a bit of the old prickliness creeping back in, but she didn't mean it any more. She still wasn't sure where she and Leia stood, but she knew animosity, let alone outright hostility, was no longer a factor.

The other woman didn't seem to take offense at the barb. "I came by to thank you for saving my brother from the clone on Wayland, and all of us from C'baoth. If you hadn't been there, my husband, Lando, Chewie, and the droids would likely be dead, and my brother and I would also be dead or—worse—C'baoth's slaves."

Mara felt her shoulders beginning to hunch up. This expression of gratitude wasn't nearly as uncomfortable for her as Luke bringing up Poln Major during their jaunt through the Wayland forest, but it still felt awkward. "I should be thanking you," she said. "If you hadn't brought Karrde and the vornskrs, hadn't guided me when C'baoth was hurling those stones in my face, I never would have reached him. I'm the one who would have been dead, or his slave." Even with C'baoth eliminated, the thought was enough to make her shiver.

"All right, but just because I helped too doesn't negate your contribution," Leia said. "I'm still grateful. And I wanted to thank you again for saving my children from Thrawn's kidnappers. If C'baoth had gotten his hands on them …" Now it was the other woman's turn to shiver.

"We went over that already," Mara said hastily, "we're all very glad that didn't happen." There was an awkward pause, where it seemed neither of them knew what to say next. Mara was the one to break it. "I suppose I should thank you, in turn, for your part in breaking me out of my house arrest."

"Under the circumstances, it was the least we could do."

Another awkward pause, only this one had a distinctly different texture. A thought had come to Mara, one she wanted desperately to voice, yet also feared to; she wasn't sure why. "Can I ask you a question?" she blurted out, before she could change her mind.

"Of course."

"When we had our first conversation a few weeks ago, just before the kidnapping attempt, we … talked a little about what it was like for you, losing your home and almost everyone you knew." Mara felt her cheeks heating; at the time, she'd been caught up in her own self-pity, and quickly dismissed the parallel between her situation after Palpatine's death and Leia's after the destruction of Alderaan. "How … how did you get through that? How did you put your life back together?"

The former princess smiled sadly. "As you pointed out in that conversation, I had another life, another community, waiting for me to slide into. And I had a purpose. Even before I met Han and Luke and Chewie and the droids, I knew I had to contact the Rebel base somehow, to save them from the Death Star. And after the original Death Star was destroyed, the Empire which produced it was still out there. I had to be strong, so other beings would be spared the fate of Alderaan.

"It was hard. So hard sometimes it seemed unbearable. There were times—many times—all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sob until the rest of the universe went away. I cried, often. But I always pulled myself back together and got back to work. As much as anything else, it was a way of honoring my adopted parents, and my aunts, and everyone else I'd known on Alderaan." Leia gave a wry smile. "And the nice thing about being a leader of a tiny insurgency against the biggest, most powerful government in the galaxy—there are plenty of distractions to keep one's mind busy. There was always some crisis which needed my attention, if not several at once." She winced, as if at some private memory.

"And then, eventually, there was Luke, and Han, too." When Leia spoke her husband's name, a faraway look came into her eyes. Mara had seen that expression a few times before in her life—it was the look of someone utterly and hopelessly infatuated. Unexpectedly, she felt a sudden stab of envy. She'd made few connections with men over the years, and they almost invariably ended on a sour note. Most of the time, it didn't bother her: she always had other, more urgent things to worry about, and she found that the times she didn't have a man in her life, she wasn't plagued by the same yearning which affected some other single women of her acquaintance, and which provided fodder for a million low grade holodramas. She knew she'd never be able to maintain a serious, long-term relationship, and most of the time, she was content with that. Once in a great while though, she felt some pang for what could never be.

"I'm sorry," Leia said, and Mara gratefully returned from her momentary reverie, "I'm afraid I've strayed from your question. As you pointed out in our previous conversation, your situation after the Emperor's death was very different from mine after Alderaan. But perhaps it's closer this time."

"Oh? How so?"

"You said it yourself. When the galaxy got knocked off its axis for me, I had another life ready to move into with the Rebellion, and I had friends and allies to help me find my way. You didn't have that when the Emperor died, but you do now."

"I suppose I do, at that." Not that Mara was prepared to count Leia or her brother or anyone in their circle as "friends," but allies, yes. And she was friends with Karrde, and Aves, and other members of the organization, after a fashion, anyway.

"Do you think you're ready? Really ready, I mean; to start anew?"

That question brought Mara up short. "I don't understand," she said.

Leia raised her eyebrows. "You know, Luke went through a similar experience to the one we did. His aunt and uncle were murdered by the Empire, and he had to flee his home planet with stormtroopers and Star Destroyers nipping at his heels. The main difference was that he wanted his life to change—if not in that way. He was never content to be just a farmboy on an insignificant little dustball of a planet. But for the first year or two after he blew up the Death Star and joined the Rebellion, he would often revert to that simple, inexperienced moisture farmer whenever the stress or the responsibility or even the acclaim got to be too much for him. Every so often he would run off on a lark, or we'd find him trying to tune up a piece of nonessential equipment as if it was one of his uncle's vaporators.

"What I'm getting at, Mara, is that even when we've cast off our former lives, they still have power over us. I was already a leader of the Rebellion when I lost my homeworld, but every so often, I still caught myself thinking and behaving like a Senator, or like an Alderaanian princess. And Luke was prone to slipping into old moisture farmer habits. And Han—it took him years to commit to the Rebellion, to the point where it had transitioned into the New Republic before he was fully on board. And even now, years later, he still hasn't let got of those old smuggler tendencies; though admittedly, Han's a special case."

"And, what, you're afraid I'm going to revert back into a bitter refugee?" Mara said. "Don't worry, not happening."

Leia made an expression that looked halfway between a smile and a grimace. "Actually, I was more concerned about you reverting back to being the Emperor's Hand."

Ah, that made more sense. But … "Don't you trust me?" Mara said, and was surprised at the hurt she felt as she said it.

The other woman smiled sadly at her. "Of course I trust you, Mara. I always have. I know won't do anything to hurt me, or Luke, or Han, or my children, or anyone else in the New Republic. The only one I'm worried for is you: you've taken a good look at your old life, the life you once idolized, and you've rejected it. That can't be easy."

"Okay, I get it," Mara said. "You want to know how I feel about the Empire now, after everything that's happened recently."

"Something like that, yes. I don't mean to pry, but I know you've been through a lot, and I wanted to see how you're holding up under it all."

Leia _was_ prying, but she also had a point. Still, Mara found she couldn't bring herself to answer the question directly, so instead, she asked, "Did Luke ever tell you how Karrde wound up imprisoned aboard Thrawn's flagship a few months back?"

"No, but Karrde sketched out the basic details while we were traveling to Wayland," Leia said. "You were captured by an Imperial Star Destroyer at Abregado-Rae, and forced to make a deal with Thrawn to get him the location of the _Katana_ fleet in exchange for revoking his death mark on Karrde's organization." The other woman's eyes narrowed. "You were supposed to persuade Karrde to accept the deal, but Thrawn broke that part of it and captured him instead. That's when you sought out Luke on Jomark to help you rescue him."

That was a generous description of Mara's role in the debacle, but correct in the essential points. "When Thrawn double-crossed me," Mara said, "I convinced myself it was a betrayal of the Empire as I knew it. I was right in thinking the old Empire I served was gone, but when I look at it honestly, the Empire under Thrawn was a lot less corrupt, duplicitous and iniquitous than it was under Palpatine. But it's still nothing I'd want to be a part of."

"And the New Republic?"

"Don't raise your hopes too high," Mara said, with a bit of the old sarcasm, but without the bitter edge it'd had before. "I signed on because I can see which trajectory the galaxy is headed; and more importantly, because Karrde is wholly committed to this project, though I still can't figure out why. As far as I'm concerned, the New Republic is a business partner, and a better one than the Empire under Thrawn or Palpatine, but that's it."

Leia favored her with a knowing smile. "Good enough. Karrde told me something similar when he agreed to bring me to Wayland. It's something to build on, anyway. I hope you'll be happy working with us. You remind me a little of someone who once expressed similar sentiments to me many years ago. But that still doesn't quite answer my question, about how you view the Empire now."

"I know," Mara said. "It's complicated. For most of my life, I had myself convinced the Empire under Palpatine was a force for good in the galaxy, that my service to it helped assure peace and justice and order. I'd built up this … bubble of lies and half truths around myself to sustain that outlook." She held her hands in front of her stomach, then pulled them further apart by way of illustration.

"I used to dismiss talk of the Emperor's personal depredations; I either wrote them off as Rebel propaganda, or convinced myself that the people who were kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and assassinated on his orders must on some level have deserved their punishment. That the few innocents who got swept up in the violence were unfortunate but necessary casualties in the work of maintaining social order."

Leia's eyebrows furrowed at this, but she didn't say anything. For her part, Mara was suddenly awash in memories from the days, weeks, and months after the Emperor's death, the Imperial rout at Endor, and the declaration of a New Republic. She hadn't actively sought out news of the galaxy, but stories filtered in to her from practically every direction. Stories of prisons, detention centers and labor camps closed down, their inmates set free. Stories of surveillance systems dismantled, security forces demilitarized. Stories of production quotas lowered, of bans reinstated against confiscations and at-will searches. Stories of censorship restrictions on universities, arts spaces, and media outlets lifted—of universities, arts spaces, and media outlets reopening after decades of closure. Stories of decreased poverty and better living and working conditions for tens of trillions of beings.

And there were more personal stories, such as that of the elderly Neimoidian with whom Mara lived for a month on Jijornta, speaking bitterly of stormtroopers shooting down her great-nephew in the street, because, they said, he resembled a Duros Black Sun enforcer thought to be operating in the neighborhood. So many stories of loved ones fired, harassed, beaten, incarcerated, disappeared, tortured, and killed for petty reasons, or for speaking out against some lesser injustice.

For five years, Mara had set against these stories accounts of former Imperials officers and officials assaulted or lynched, of increases in interspecies violence and organized crime, of cities and townships—even some planets—where social infrastructure collapsed after the Empire's withdrawal. She used these grumbles to drown out the cacophony of other stories, the ones which spoke of the horrors of living under Imperial rule.

"The truth was always right there in front of me, even before Palpatine's death," Mara said, "if I'd only had the courage to see it. I suppose he really believed his Empire was the best way to bring peace and stability to the galaxy, but what it brought was oppression and misery. I knew about Tarkin's record of brutality, but I convinced myself atrocities like the Ghorman Massacre, the Death Star, and Alderaan were all justified."

Leia flinched at the mention of her homeworld's destruction, but again she withheld comment, allowing Mara to go on. "And not just Alderaan. When I think back on it, I'm sure Palpatine was responsible for scourging Caamas, as well. I knew about the Noghri homeworld, too—that they were poisoning it. Well, I didn't know, exactly, but only because I never bothered to find out the truth of those rumors, never thought about the implications if they were true." She stopped there, but she could have gone on, listing a hundred, a thousand, a million other depredations.

"The Emperor's crimes were as numerous as they were despicable," Leia said, as if perceiving Mara's thoughts.

"And I helped him commit them," Mara said. "All those beings I ruined, imprisoned, and murdered in the service of his regime. I told myself I was doing good, and I did that, too: weeding out corruption, eliminating pirates and the nastier sorts of smuggler—but it was all in the service of a machine of death and suffering."

"You feel culpable for the Empire's atrocities?"

"I guess. I'm still trying to sort out what I feel, what I should feel, about what I did." Mara shook her head. "You're right, I still miss it sometimes. I miss the feeling of power, of pride and prestige, and the sense that what I was doing really mattered. And when I hear all these Councilors and Ambassadors squabbling over petty differences and treating the fates of millions of sentient beings like bargaining chips in their political games, sometimes I ache for someone like Palpatine to step in and force them into doing what's right, even though I know that's not how things actually worked.

"In the old Empire—at least as I remember it—everything was more simple, more clear, and the problems I encountered had real solutions which were, if not easy to implement, at least straight-forward."

"Traditionally, that's been one of the most seductive promises of imperial regimes," Leia said, nodding, "'We will make everything simple, if you follow us.' And even when you know it's not true, even when you've witnessed their spectacular failures to deliver those clear and simple solutions, the prospect can be very alluring.

"And nostalgia can be a capricious companion, also. My adopted parents, Bail and Breha Organa, and my aunts Tia, Rouge, and Celly—they were all good people, but they were people, not saints. Sometimes I need Winter's help to remind me of all the fights I had with my aunts over my 'unprincesslike' behavior, or the way Bail used to terrify us when we were little to keep us away while he discussed Rebellion business with bel Iblis and Mon Mothma and other early dissidents."

Mara gave what she was sure must be a rueful smile. "Yes, I get that, too. Whenever I think of Palpatine, I keep remembering his kindness towards me, all his words of encouragement and approval. I think some of it was genuine, I think he really cared for me, after his own fashion."

Leia's lips compressed into a thin, angry line. "I have a hard time imagining Palpatine caring for anyone or anything other than himself and his own sick pleasures," she said. "But even if you knew for sure that it was all an act, that you meant nothing to him whatsoever except as a tool to do his bidding, I doubt it would help."

"No," Mara said, thinking about some survivors of extreme parental abuse, long term captivity, and the Outer Rim slave trade she'd known in her time, "I suppose it wouldn't. Even if I knew beyond a whisper of a doubt, I'd still miss him. Miss it all."

"And how do you feel about the fact that you miss him, miss it?" For the second time in their discussion, Leia said something which caught Mara off guard.

"What do you mean?"

"You said yourself the Empire you served was a machine of death and suffering, and now you tell me you still miss the Empire, at least sometimes, and the Emperor, too. Those thoughts don't sit comfortably together, do they?"

"No, they'd don't," Mara agreed. "I don't hate myself for missing the Empire, or anything, if that's what you're getting at. I know better. But, just, well … like I said, I haven't sorted out what to think, or what to feel, about any of it."

Leia smiled now, which was not the reaction Mara expected. "And let me guess: I'm the first person you've talked with about all this."

"Who else am I supposed to talk about it with?" Mara said, surprised by the defensive tone she detected in her own voice. "Karrde wouldn't understand. Neither would any of his people. And I'm not about to open up to some random New Republic staffer or psych expert. And Luke … I can't talk about it with him, either." Her feelings about Luke were perhaps even more confused than her attitude towards Palpatine's Empire. She no longer hated him; she respected him as a person, and as a Jedi. Moreover, she trusted him. She knew she could count on him to have her back whenever she found herself in a tight corner, more than anyone else in the galaxy. And she thought she would have his back just as unreservedly, now. There was a bond between them.

But she didn't think she could call Luke a friend, either. Not now, and probably not ever. It wasn't because of any lingering resentment for his role in killing the Emperor and bringing down the Empire; it was simply the difference in their personalities. To a certain extent, she thought, they would always be the Tatooine moisture farmer and the Imperial agent—their attitudes and circumstances might have changed, but their outlooks remained fundamentally incompatible. He was as alien to Mara's universe as she was to his, and she didn't think they'd ever reconcile that divide. She had no problem standing at Luke's shoulder in a fire fight—chatting with him at a party, or walking with him along a skyarch, or taking in a shockball match with him was another matter entirely.

"I suppose I understand that," Leia said, once again oblivious to Mara's reflections. "My brother can be a very sympathetic listener, but I can see how his approach might not be what you need right now. However, had it ever occurred to you that you're not alone in what you're going through?"

"What? In turning my back on something I used to believe in, and having mixed feelings about it?"

"People who have left the Empire specifically behind, and have mixed feelings about it," Leia elaborated. "Many of the heroes of the Rebellion and the New Republic started out as Imperial defectors. Some of them committed serious crimes before they left Imperial service, and all of them have struggled with the part they played in upholding the Empire and facilitating Imperial oppression while they were a part of it. There are people in the New Republic—some of them here on Coruscant—who have been through what you're going through now. It would be easy to arrange for you to talk with some of them, if you wanted."

Mara was about to give a polite refusal on reflex, but checked herself at the last second. No, it didn't sound terribly compelling, to discuss her inmost feelings with a complete stranger. She'd had a hard enough time opening up to Leia, someone she deeply respected, and to whom she felt some level of connection after all the turmoil of the past few months. But perhaps it would do her good to talk with some of her fellow ex-Imperials. She didn't necessarily need to speak as frankly with them as she had with Leia, but even just sharing experiences might do her good. It was at least worth considering. "I suppose I might like that," she said.

The smile Leia gave her this time seemed both to recognize Mara's reservations and express the hope she might overcome them. "I'll ask Winter to put together a list of former Imperials who might be willing to talk to you. With her memory, she'll do a better job of it than I would. We can have a datacard delivered to you within, oh, a week's time. What you do with the names on that card afterward will be up to you."

"Thank you, Leia. I appreciate it."

"The pleasure is mine, Mara." It was a stock phrase among politicians, palace courtiers, business leaders, senior officials, and everyone else who made their living in the world of vibro-blades hiding behind false smiles which constituted high society. Coming from Leia, though, Mara found that for once she believed it. "You've done so much for the New Republic, and for my family, already. I hope we can help you figure out where you need to be, where you want to be."

"Thank you," Mara repeated. "You've already helped me a lot. You, and Luke, and Han, and your friends. And I'm grateful."

Leia cocked her head. "But there are some things you have to figure out for yourself?"

Mara gave a rueful laugh. "Something like that, yes."

Leia patted Mara on the arm, just below the shoulder. "I know how that goes, too."

They exchanged a few more obligatory pleasantries, and then Leia left.

It probably could have gone a lot worse, Mara reflected, as she resignedly returned her attention to the Council report. _I didn't even flinch when she called it Coruscant instead of Imperial Center_. That probably counted as progress.

* * *

In the end, Mara did read the list Winter drew up, and she took Leia's advice, after a fashion. She made the acquaintance of Kyle Katarn, who'd defected from the Empire straight out of the Academy, when he learned his father was murdered by an Imperial Inquisitor. It was not Kyle's previous ties to the Empire which caught Mara's attention, though—Kyle Katarn had received Jedi training, of a sort. Perhaps it was the lightsaber, but Mara found her interest in learning the use of the Force rekindled following the fight on Wayland. At the same time, she didn't feel comfortable accepting Luke's offers to train her, as he was doing for Leia, and would do one day for her twin children. Mara wasn't ready for a relationship with Luke as intimate as teacher and student, so she was excited to find another potential teacher.

Fortunately, Mara found she liked Kyle, and he, in turn, was happy to help her improve her Force skills. His path to Knighthood, she quickly learned, was almost as labyrinthine as the one which brought Mara to his tutelage. That plus their shared Imperial past provided plenty of common ground to help them bond in both their studies of the Force, and as friends. They never directly spoke of Mara's attitude toward the Empire now, but their conversations helped her come to terms with her past and develop a new view of the galaxy and her place in it. Mara also befriended Kyle's companion and possible girlfriend Jan Ors, a refreshingly level-headed and no-nonsense New Republic Intelligence Officer.

With a bit of effort, Mara struck a balance between her studies with Kyle and her duties as Smuggler's Alliance liaison to the New Republic. In a way, it was even fun; it had been many long years since Mara studied the Force, and she'd forgotten how exciting it could be. And while working for Karrde afforded Mara the opportunity to exercise several of the skills she'd learned as the Emperor's Hand, it hadn't challenged her the way her position as liaison did. For a little while, Mara's life fell into a peaceful equilibrium.

As Leia had predicted, though, Mara found the ghosts of her past difficult to banish. She was surprised at the amount of rage and betrayal she felt, some years after Wayland, when she learned the truth of Thrawn's intimation that she hadn't been the only Emperor's Hand, that her master had had many other such operatives whom he kept secret from her. Even had she not long since rejected Palpatine and her service to him, it was a silly concern when placed next to all the rest, but it cut her deeply nonetheless.

In the meantime, though, Mara had more tangible ghosts to deal with. She began to be approached by Imperial agents seeking to recruit her back into the Empire's service, and muttering dark hints about how she needed to return to her "master." Even more troubling was the way these bids seemed to presage a renewed Imperial push, shortly after the New Republic's victory in the Cuitric System. Despite having lost its greatest military strategist, the very last of the Grand Admirals, the resurgent Empire saw a string of victories in the Core Worlds, which culminated in the recapture of Coruscant.

With the Republic on the defensive, Mara found herself working alongside Kyle to put out brush fires. When he went missing on Dromund Kaas—a world with links to the ancient Sith—Mara traveled to the planet, only to find Kyle driven to the dark side by the planet's malevolent influence. With great effort, Mara broke through the dark side's control and brought Kyle back to his senses. After that adventure, Kyle declared her apprenticeship completed, and after affirming their mutual commitment as friends and co-learners, they went their separate ways.

After Dromund Kaas, Mara received yet another offer—practically a demand—from an Imperial emissary, but this one differed from the others in two important aspects: it came from a Dark Jedi, and a Dark Jedi who claimed to be speaking on behalf of Palpatine himself, returned from death in a clone body. This time, Mara had to make her refusal a bit more conclusive. Whoever was behind these overtures, she didn't believe it was really her former master—a clone perhaps, but not the same Palpatine she'd served. Even if it was, she'd left that life behind her forever, and was all the better for it.

If nothing else, the Clone Emperor's bid for galactic power underscored how lucky Mara was to have escape the real Emperor's clutches, no matter how much misery she experienced in subsequent years. She supposed she had Luke to thank for that. Or perhaps in saving his life on Poln Major, she'd preemptively saved her own, as well. Curious to reflect how much her perceptions of that one event changed with time.

Like the members of the Smuggler's Alliance, Mara kept herself mostly to the sidelines in the ensuing conflict. She assisted the Republic in evacuating Coruscant when it fell to Imperial forces, and escaped capture from one of the Clone Emperor's minions—with some help from Kyle—but beyond that, she played little part in the conflict.

Mara was glad when the Clone Emperor was defeated at Da Soocha, and defeated again—permanently, this time—on Onderon. He'd brought the galaxy nothing but blood, chaos, and suffering in any incarnation, and it was well rid of him. But she was equally happy not to have taken part in his downfall. _Let Luke and his sister be the heroes_ , _it's what they're good at_ , _I've no stomach for it_.

They and their allies were the ones who toppled the Clone Emperor, of course. Mara supposed that meant, in a way, the victory was partly her doing. _If I hadn't saved Luke on Poln Major_ , _Myrkr_ , _Jomark_ , _and Wayland_ , _he'd never have had the chance to take down these Clone Emperors_. Then again, Karrde and many others in the organization also played a role in saving Luke, Han, Lando Calrissian, and the benighted droids from Thrawn's forces on Myrkr, so she supposed by that logic, all of them deserved some of the credit, too. Regardless, Mara got no part of it, and wanted none.

When Luke opened his Jedi academy—his _praxeum—_ on Yavin Four, Mara allowed herself to be convinced to go there and continue her training. This was partially at the urging of Kyle, who'd already taken a place as one of twelve students in the _praxeum_ 's inaugural class.

Mara trained alongside Kyle and the other students, and befriended Corran Horn, an ex-Corellian Security Force officer. She helped the students defeat the ghost of a long-dead Sith Lord and bring Luke out of a coma. Perhaps she should chalk that up as another time she'd saved his life, or at least helped to.

She didn't stay too long at the _praxeum_ afterward. Luke's training methods worked wonders for many of the students, but Mara chafed under the regime. Both Corran and Kyle also left not long after the defeat of Exar Kun, though both returned to the fold in later years. For her part, Mara visited the academy off and on over the years, but never for very long.

Part of her reluctance to remain at the academy was due to Mara's desire not to become tied down to any one place. But part of it, also was that she worried about Luke. As the years passed, she saw him growing increasingly reliant on using the Force as a mere instrument of brute strength. She could see it worried Leia, too, and unfortunately, there wasn't much either of them could do about it. Mara found it best just to avoid the _praxeum_ for the most part.

It wasn't as if she had nothing else to work on. Karrde was still grooming her for more responsibilities in his organization, and even had her striking out on her own to see how she handled running a business for a couple of years. He also had her accompanying Lando Calrissian on an on-again, off-again search for some old associate or other in the Kathol Outback. It made for an interesting diversion, though Lando's flattering manner often got on her nerves, and the pretense that they were a couple—while providing excellent cover—compounded her irritation.

Her path crossed with Luke's and Leia's and their friends' a dozen times or so over the decade that followed Thrawn's defeat and Mara's release from the Emperor's last, murderous injunction. Usually, these encounters came at a time of crisis for the New Republic, and Mara was always glad to help bail Luke and his allies out of whatever mess they'd gotten into this time, but always even more glad to walk away when it was over.

On one memorable occasion, she found herself trapped with Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, and the droids for several days aboard the _Millennium Falcon_ , along with a hulking Thernbee and an all-too-slowly-digesting ysalamir. Once, in the years following the Emperor's death, Mara welcomed being cut off from the Force—now she could barely stand it. She'd even grown to appreciate Luke's company, if only because he didn't seem prone to the kind of ridiculous antics Han and Chewbacca got up to. She wound up playing a _lot_ of games of Dejarik with Luke and Leia during that whole affair.

In a way, those days on Han's ship came as a relief to Mara, despite all the irritation and the temporary loss of her connection with the Force. She thought that maybe, being cut off from the Force would prompt Luke to reflect on how he'd been using it; to stop seeing it as a mere power source and recognize the importance of opening himself to its' subtler, less tangible aspects. Once the ysalamir was digested and their ability to touch the Force restored, however, Luke was back to his old habits and Mara, disappointed, withdrew again.

When they met again at Corellia a year later, she could see he was as deeply mired in his power-trip as he'd ever been. She could also see that, on some level, he realized something was wrong, but hadn't made the connection. Losing Gaeriel Captison, an old friend who might—under other circumstances—have also been a lover, hit him hard, and Mara knew that even if he hadn't sustained this loss, there was no way she could impose understanding on Luke. He would have to figure it out on his own. She could only stand back and trust the Force to guide him.

Not long after the Corellian crisis, Mara closed down her independent shipping business and returned to Karrde's organization full time. In her new position, she flew several missions with the _Starry Ice_ , under the command of Captain Shirlee Faughn.

One such mission, a supply run to the Mid Rim, landed them in the midst of a tumultuous, planet-wide celebration …

* * *

Fifteen years after the Battle of Endor …

"Thank you for your patronage, and have a felicitous Endor Day."

Mara mustered a convincing smile and returned the Zygerrian shopkeeper's benediction, before accepting her purchase of fried tonfib rolls and returning to the twisting, meandering road leading through the marketplace.

The official New Republic holiday, Restoration Day, wasn't for another month, in celebration of the return to democratic rule. But sentient creatures the galaxy over still celebrated the anniversary of the Battle of Endor, and the deaths of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. While no branch of the New Republic government formally endorsed Endor Day, most tolerated its celebration, which Mara had to admit was likely the wisest course of action.

There was no escaping the revelry, even on a relatively parochial world like Naboo. Everywhere there were beings in costume: singing, dancing, waving decorative banners, setting off Cheban poppers, and generally making merry. On every street corner there was a live reenactment, and in every public square, huge holoprojectors playing documentary recordings of the space battle culled from thousands of capital ship and fighter craft holocams. Those that weren't playing documentaries were playing one of hundreds of derivative holodramas depicting the battle on the moon's surface, or the confrontation aboard the Death Star. Mara had already seen at least two outlets screening _Luke Skywalker and the Jedi's Revenge_ , a racy choice, given its sympathetic portrayal of the Emperor.

"I suppose this is all rather hard on you," Captain Faughn said at Mara's elbow, snapping her out of her reverie.

Endor Day—along with Restoration Day and the former Empire Day—had been some of the worst times for Mara during those first few years after the Emperor's death. Back then, each anniversary was one more reason to hate Luke Skywalker, one more reason to blame herself for having saved him. But that time was long gone.

Mara considered Faughn, a stern faced woman with dark eyes and short dark hair, who'd been smuggling since roughly the time of Mara's birth. She was capable, steadfast, and not nearly so humorless as her expression often suggested. She was an exemplary officer, but she could, on occasion, get a touch too personal for Mara's taste. "I've put my past behind me, Faughn. Palpatine was an evil man, perhaps the most evil this galaxy has ever produced, and his Empire caused great suffering—with my help. These celebrations may be in poor taste, but I can't fault anyone wishing to express gratitude at their emancipation from his rule."

Mara and Faughn both turned sideways to allow half a dozen laughing, shouting children, wearing masks and brandishing sparkle-sticks, to run past.

"You've no residual regrets at all?"

"Regrets about no longer being the Emperor's pet assassin? None. That's a chapter of my life I've long since closed." It hadn't been nearly as easy as Mara was making it sound, but she had no intention of relating to Faughn the intellectual and emotional turmoil she went through before finally disavowing the last vestiges of the Emperor's Hand and everything that position stood for. "Regret for the death and misery I caused or allowed to proceed unchecked in my capacity as pet assassin? Plenty, but I've come to terms with that, as well."

Faughn had pulled slightly behind Mara to allow a group of visiting Gotals to pass them in the other direction, so Mara couldn't see the other woman's face, but she could sense the _Starry Ice_ 's captain considering her words. Faughn was silent for so long, Mara began to think she had given up the topic. Unfortunately, she hadn't. "What was he like, in person?" she said, as they passed into a bustling square. "The Emperor, I mean?"

This was a topic Mara had even less interest discussing with Faughn than her thoughts on Endor Day. "He set a high value on efficiency, and had little use for inane chatter," she said.

Mara felt the older woman stiffen. "My apologies, Jade."

She could have kicked herself. Faughn's question had been inappropriate, but it hadn't deserved such a curt response.

Mara was opening her mouth to apologize, when there was a sudden cry of alarm off to the their left. She and Faughn turned in unison to see six human males on three repulsorsleds tearing through the plaza. All six were firing blasters at a raised platform at the North end of the square, between the statues of some Naboo queen and a Gungan Boss.

Beings from a dozen different sentient races scattered from the platform, on which was mounted several festive devices, including a holoprojector, a sonic blanket generator, and a multistage show rocket.

The men were yelling curses and epithets, but Mara couldn't make out what they were saying over the roar of their repulsorlifts and the screams of the crowd. They were also firing wildly; it looked like they hadn't managed to kill anyone yet, but it could only be a matter of time. And if they hit the show rocket … _Are they complete idiots?_ It was possible, and in some ways, made them even more dangerous.

"Should we …?" Faughn said.

Good question. Mara glanced around the plaza, and noted with relief several humans and Gungans in Theed security uniforms pushing their way through the crowd. They were all some distance away, however, and making slow progress. By the time they reached the platform, many people might be dead.

On the other hand, if Mara and Faughn tried to take down the attackers with their blasters, they might get mistaken for allies—or merely a rival gang—by those security officers. Moreover, while Mara kept her own shooting skills well honed, she didn't know Faughn's aptitude, and the very last thing they needed was another blaster firing around the square at random.

The circumstances, Mara judged, called for something with a bit more finesse. Fortunately, she had an idea or two.

"Hold on for a moment," she told Faughn. "See if you can find a clear, well protected vantage, and be ready to draw your blaster, but only as a last resort. If possible, let me and the security force handle this."

"All right," Faughn said, giving Mara another speculative look, "but what are _you_ going to do?"

"I have a very special set of skills I acquired as part of my … unique upbringing," Mara said. "I intend to distract our friends over there and give security a chance to take them down before somebody gets killed." She said the last part over her shoulder, already making her way through the crowd towards the platform.

Faughn called out to her, "I trust you know what you're doing, Jade."

"Of course I do, Faughn. Now get going." That was a lie, of course. Taking on six regular humans—and amateurs, at that—was well within Mara's abilities. The problem was that most of the methods which sprang to mind would substantially increase the risk to civilians in the area, and that was unacceptable. And Mara's moderate command of the Force might not be sufficient for the alternative maneuvers she was presently considering. Still, the only one she'd be putting in extra danger would be herself, and that risk was worth taking.

Besides, if she wanted to avoid civilian casualties, she'd better act quickly. The six bravos had landed their sleds on the platform by now, and taken four stragglers—a Gungan, an Elomin, and two humans—hostage. Four of the men took up stations on the edges of the platform, no longer shooting, but covering the crowd with their blasters. One was holding the prisoners, while the sixth appeared to be working at the base of the show rocket. Mara didn't like the looks of that, but it was the man with the hostages she found immediately worrying. He was yelling at them, gesticulating wildly with his blaster carbine—the Gungan, a short female in official-looking robes, was talking back to him, her body language confrontational. Brave of her, but more likely than not to get her or one of her companions burned down at any moment. Amateurs with itchy trigger fingers like these men tended to respond violently to being stood up to.

Mara took a position near an elaborate fountain a couple of hundred meters from the platform, which should offer her a modicum of cover. She could see the man shouting at the hostages was perhaps a decade her senior, with a shock of yellow hair, and a face that might have been handsome if not for a sneer which looked—to Mara's eye—more or less permanent. He was waving his blaster more violently now, and screaming louder, though the only word Mara caught was "traitors."

Then, just as Mara was stretching out to the man with the Force, a pebble, or some similar small object, flew out of the crowd and bounced off the blaster arm of one of his compatriots, on the far end of the platform from Mara.

 _Damn_. The bravo, a hulking man with a cyborg eye, whirled, obviously intending to fire back into the crowd despite only a general idea of where the missile came from. Mara made a clumsy, last ditch tug with the Force, which failed to wrench the blaster out of the man's hand. She did, however, manage to twist it so that when the man pulled the trigger, the bolt fired harmlessly into the sky.

Under other circumstances, the bewildered reaction of the would-be shooter and his companions would have been comical. However, Mara knew their surprise would quickly turn to anger—and one of the scary things about rowdies like these was that when you got them angry, there was no predicting which direction they'd leap.

She had to act now, while they still hesitated. She drew as deeply upon the Force as she possibly could, and tried to lift all six blasters into the air at once. It was a feat Luke could pull off with little effort, as could many of those early students at the _praxeum_ , now Masters in their own right.

Unfortunately, it was clearly beyond Mara's current abilities. Three of the blasters jerked in their owners' hands, but the men maintained their holds. They were furious now, and if they didn't find the source of this strange attack soon, they were apt to make a guess and start firing.

So much for subtlety. Mara stepped around the fountain and activated her lightsaber. "Hey," she called out, "is there a problem here?"

Much to her relief, the six humans once again showed themselves complete amateurs by all turning to look at her, even the one hunched over the show rocket. The large one with the cyborg eye exclaimed, "It's Skywalker!"

"You idiot," retorted an averaged-sized man with dark hair and a small beard, "it's a woman."

"Doesn't matter," the yellow-haired man with the perpetual sneer bit out, glaring at Mara, "get her!" And suddenly, all six men were pointing their blasters at her.

"There's no need for this," Mara told them, "whatever your grievances, I'm sure there are better ways to make yourselves heard." By the graveyard of Alderaan, she was starting to sound like Luke. Still, if it got the job done. She noted with approval the four hostages making surreptitious movements towards the edge of the stage.

"And who might you be?" the man at the show rocket said.

"Doesn't matter," the yellow-haired one said again. "You've got one chance lady: drop the weapon and walk away. I don't know what fancy tricks you've got with that thing, but I'll bet they won't do you much good against six blasters." He was right about that much, up to a point.

"Let me propose a counter-offer," Mara said, "you all drop your weapons and turn yourselves in. Whether by design or sheer ineptitude, you seem to have avoided killing anyone so far with your antics. I think the courts will be lenient."

The yellow-haired man—apparently the group's unofficial spokesman—grinned and spat. "Waste her, boys."

All six opened fire. Mara would, indeed, have had trouble blocking six shots at once, but fortunately for her, the bravos' aim hadn't magically improved over the last minute or so. Only two bolts came anywhere near her, and she easily deflected both with her lightsaber.

Just as the men were preparing for a second round, something which looked to Mara rather like a force-pike jabbed the bravo with the mechanical eye in the shoulder. The pike—or whatever it was—emitted an electric charge, and the man bellowed and then slumped, unconscious.

The two bravos nearest him jolted in surprise, but they and their remaining companions fired again. This time, three of the five shots came near Mara. Once again, she deflected two, but she just missed the third, and it grazed her side. She felt a flash of pain, as if she'd been brushed by a laser torch. She stumbled, and only her years of conditioning as an Imperial agent kept her from losing her feet.

The bravos were having problems of their own, however. The wielder of the force-pike—no, a Gungan elecropole, Mara realized—was now visible as a human Theed security officer, with a Gungan partner at her side. The two officers stabbed their electropoles at the next closest man, gaunt and sallow with a scar on his nose, but he dodged the attack.

Confronted with this new threat, the bravos once again showed themselves amateurs by hesitating over which opponent to concentrate their fire on. The yellow-haired one took another shot at Mara, but the remaining four turned their blasters on the two security officers.

Overriding the pain in her side, Mara battered the bolt aimed her way aside. The security officers activated personal energy shields carried in their off-hands, and the other blasts splashed off these as harmlessly as against Mara's lightsaber.

The bravos appeared to be caught off guard— _Did they not even consider they'd have to deal with security at some point?_ —but the yellow-haired one, at least, seemed to realize the futility of shooting at Mara. He cast about him, presumably looking for an exit … or maybe a hostage. Unfortunately, while the four prisoners had taken the opportunity to escape the platform, they hadn't gotten far. It looked like the Elomin had an injured leg, and the other three were half-helping, half-dragging him away, all while trying to avoid their captors' notice. An attempt which had now failed, Mara saw.

She didn't wait to see what the yellow-haired man would do. With the attackers' attention and blasters aimed elsewhere, Mara made a Force-assisted leap to cover the distance between herself and them.

She landed right in front of the yellow-haired man and with a smooth swing of her lightsaber, cut his blaster carbine in half. She used the momentum of the blow to lash her leg out and sweep his feet out from under him.

The man who'd been working on the show rocket shot at Mara, and this time, she deflected the bolt right back into his chest. He went down, dead or injured, she didn't know.

She looked around to see the two security officers had subdued the bravo with the scarred nose. That left two still on their feet. They seemed to be in the midst of a standoff with the officers, unable to get a shot past the latter's energy shields, but keeping them far enough away to be out of range of the electropoles.

Given the general ineptitude displayed by these lowlifes so far, Mara had no doubt they'd soon make a critical mistake, allowing the officers to overcome them. Still, as long as she was here, she might as well help out. She planted a kick in the nearest man's back, causing him to stumble forward, and both him and his companion to look around, startled. This was all the opening the officers needed to step in and shock the two bravos into unconsciousness.

Just as Mara was about to deactivate her lightsaber, she felt a flash of danger. She whirled, cursing herself for turning her back on the yellow-haired man before ensuring he was out of the fight. She'd let herself get distracted by his compatriots—sloppy.

Mara heard the unmistakable report of a stun blast, and she finished her turn just in time to have the sneering man collapse at her feet. A still active, seven-centimeter vibroknife fell out of his hand.

She turned to the statue of Mon Mothma in the center of the square, several hundred meters away, and gave a silent salute to the figure standing just behind the raised pedestal. Apparently, Captain Faughn's aptitude with a blaster was quite high.

* * *

Mara and Faughn were taken to the nearest Theed security station along with the bravos. At the station, Mara was prescribed a bacta patch for the burn on her side, and then she and Faughn were left to cool their heels while the lumbering Theed bureaucracy sorted out what it wanted to do with them. While Mara was getting her burn treated, Faughn commed the _Starry Ice_ , detailing Corvus and Elkin to complete their supply pick-up, with her and Mara's apologies for their inability to make the exchange in person.

At last, an older Gungan security official of indeterminate gender came to take Mara's statement. The official informed her that the six bravos were self-styled members of the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front, although they had no actual connection to the old Imperial Intelligence-backed terrorist group. Basically, a bunch of hardliners trying to inflate their own importance by identifying with a long-defunct paramilitary organization. Drunk on their own bravado and years—decades—of simmering resentment, they'd concocted an ill considered plan to disrupt the Endor Day celebrations and blow up the statue of Mon Mothma with a show rocket, in the vague, forlorn hope of inspiring a mass, pro-Imperial uprising. The official seemed almost to pity the six men, despite the fact they'd shot up a major square, injuring over a dozen people, and coming close to killing several.

Mara, for her part, asked the official to wish the men a happy Endor Day from her personally. Not that her name would likely mean anything to them—unlike Luke and Leia and the other heroes of the Rebellion, Mara was still thankfully unknown to the average galactic citizen. Still, it felt right to her.

As she waited for the official to speak with Faughn, Mara found her thoughts drifting to her first encounter with Luke on Poln Major, and their almost-encounter at Jabba's Palace. If she had failed to save him in that first instance or had succeeded in assassinating him in the second, Palpatine might still be ruling the galaxy with a durasteel fist. If he were still alive, he would no doubt have exploited the six bravos as useful incompetents, or had them eliminated as liabilities. Whatever past glory the men yearned for was as much a delusion as the fantasy of a just and lawful Empire Mara had carried with her up until Mount Tantiss. Mara found a smile coming to her lips. Today was the anniversary of the Battle of Endor, the day Palpatine died and, in many ways, the Empire he'd built died with him. And she, Mara Jade, former Emperor's Hand, was proud of the role she'd played—however modest and inadvertent—in bringing it down.

At last, she and Faughn were discharged, and allowed to return to the _Starry Ice_.

They hadn't spoken much since being escorted to the security office, other than making the necessary arrangements to finish their mission for Karrde. Mara was feeling a little wary of Faughn; the other woman knew her history and her abilities of course, but knowing abstractly and witnessing directly were two very different things.

Sure enough, less than a minute after they boarded an airspeeder to take them to their landing pit, Faughn turned to her, looking more animated than Mara could remember seeing her before. "That was impressive back there," the older woman said. "I've heard stories about the Jedi Knights of old, but I never imagined I'd see a Jedi's handiwork up close and in person."

"I'm hardly a Jedi, Faughn. I have the raw talent and some training, but that's all. A true Jedi, like Luke Skywalker or Master Cilghal, would have made much shorter work of those buffoons. And they wouldn't have gotten themselves shot in the process," Mara added, ruefully rubbing the bacta patch on her side.

Faughn gave Mara a skeptical look, apparently finding it difficult to credit the possibility of a being displaying even greater feats of superhuman prowess.

Mara smiled, "Oh, it's true, their power is much greater than mine." Her smile faded as she remembered that Luke, at least, was far too prone to exercising that power, whether or not the situation warranted.

"Why haven't you completed your training, Jade?"

Ah, back to overly personal. "The Jedi path isn't meant for me," Mara said. "It demands commitments I'm not prepared to make. I'm content to let things remain as they are."

"Even if it means occasionally getting shot?" Faughn noted.

"There's always a trade-off," Mara said philosophically.

"I suppose there is."

 _This is who I am_ , Mara thought, _not a Jedi_ , _not the Emperor's Hand_. _Not an assassin_ , _not a hero_. _I'm a trader in goods and information_ ; _liaison between the Smuggler's Alliance and the New Republic_. _I have work which is challenging_ , _occasionally exciting_ , _and promotes true galactic stability_. _And if I ever decide I want to leave it all behind_ , _strike off on my own in pursuit of something else_ , _I can_ , _simple as that_. It certainly wasn't where she expected her life to turn out, but she was content with it, all the same.

That was what she told herself, anyway. Most days, she believed it.

* * *

The next major upheaval of Mara's life came a few months after the incident on Naboo, and it started when Leia Organa Solo discovered some partially-destroyed datacards in the ruins of Mount Tantiss. One of these datacards contained new information about the death of the planet Caamas, which sent the New Republic into a deadly spiral towards civil war.

To be continued …


	5. Chapter 5: Trials of the Heart

Part 5: Trials of the Heart

Fifteen years after the Battle of Endor …

For Mara, the trouble began, of course, with her saving Luke Skywalker's life. This time, she pulled his tail out of a pirate's nest he'd just kicked over in the Kauron asteroid field. He then helped Mara and the _Starry Ice_ blast their way to safety, prompting Captain Faughn to remark—much to Mara's irritation—what a good team she and Luke made.

While they were at Kauron, they spooked a small ship of unknown origin and design which had been lurking in the asteroid field, apparently observing. When Luke went in for a close look, it fled the system.

Mara and the _Starry Ice_ went on to their rendezvous with Karrde at Booster Terrik's _Errant Venture—_ where another of the alien ships buzzed the Star Destroyer-turned traveling bazaar. The ship sent an unintelligible transmission, then disappeared like the previous one.

Within that transmission was a single recognizable word: Mitth'raw'nuruodo, the full name of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Corran—who happened to be visiting the _Venture_ along with his wife, Booster's daughter Mirax Terrik Horn—identified a possible connection between this incident and another datacard Leia had unearthed in the ruins of Mount Tantiss, entitled "The Hand of Thrawn."

From the exit vectors of the two unknown ships, Faughn triangulated an origin point in the Nirauan system, right at the border between Wild Space and the Unknown Regions.

Mara took the _Starry Ice_ to investigate Nirauan, then switched into a small, short-range, Defender-class starfighter to reconnoiter the second planet—where the alien ship had gone to ground—in person. She promptly wound up stranded on the planet, unable to call for help.

Naturally, it was Luke who came to rescue her, Artoo as always at his side, in Mara's own _Jade's Fire_ , no less. Once he found her, he was easily persuaded to help in completing her mission to discover the mystery ships' home base, and if possible, their intentions.

She and Luke began their joint investigation by making a bargain with the local talking mynocs to check out a group they referred to as the "Threateners from the High Tower."

On their way to the High Tower, Mara and Luke found themselves trapped in a tunnel, standing opposite each other on footrests carved into the walls two meters above the floor, arms stretched out so their hands met in the middle. Below them streamed a host of Nirauan's own variant of roverines—little insects which moved in huge swarms and would eat through anything more malleable than bone, rock, or metal. The natives called them "fire creepers."

It was an odd sensation for Mara, staring into those deep blue eyes she had first locked gazes with eighteen years earlier, across a stuffy underground hangar. How many twists and turns had their life paths taken from that point to this? They'd saved each others' lives many times since that first encounter on Poln Major, and now here they were, literally holding each other up, each depending on the other for survival.

She didn't have much time to dwell on the capriciousness of fate, the Force, or whatever the hell was guiding their destinies. Just as Mara was lamenting their inability to get their packs clear in time, one of their native Qom Jha companions pulled a colossally stupid stunt with the fire creepers, and got himself killed.

Mara regretted the little creature's death, but she'd grown accustomed to death over the decades. Luke Skywalker, the vaunted Jedi Master—and underneath that, still very much the tender-hearted Tatooine farmboy—took it harder.

"Easy on the fingers," Mara said.

That brought his attention away from the spot where Builder With Vines had vanished under the roiling mass of fire creepers, and around to her hands. "Sorry."

"That's all right," Mara said, as he loosened his grasp to something more reasonable. "You know, you've got a pretty good grip there. I thought you Jedi usually concentrated more on the mental aspects of the Force than you did in keeping in shape."

She could tell Luke wasn't just mourning the death of a fellow being and potential friend, but this was no time to work through his issues. Unfortunately, he wasn't willing to be distracted. "It's not all right. I knew it was dangerous—I could have stopped him. I _should_ have stopped him."

"How? I mean, sure, you could have used the Force to pin him to the ceiling. But what right would you have had to do something like that?"

"What do you mean, what right? I was the one in charge here. Their safety was my responsibility."

A younger Mara would have made a sarcastic comment about the arrogance of Luke's claim to being in charge. The present Mara might have as well, if she weren't busy responding to the arrogance of the whole statement. "Oh come _on_. Builder With Vines was an intelligent, responsible adult being. He knew what he was doing. He made his choice, and suffered the consequences. If you want to start feeling guilty about mistakes, start with ones that were actually your fault."

"Such as?"

 _Oh_ , _we are really going to have this out_ now, _Skywalker? Well fine_ , _then_. And Mara began to let out the criticisms she'd held back for the past eight years—the major ones, anyway. Screw-ups at the academy, failing to protect his niece and nephews, declaring himself a Jedi Master so early in his career. With an effort, she limited herself to just those major points, and didn't go into the fine details.

Mara was surprised at how much of a relief it was to unburden herself like this. She must not have realized how worried she was getting about Luke's choices—or perhaps she hadn't let herself realize it.

She half expected Luke to hit back at her, try to defend his actions. His existential crisis won out instead, and wonder of wonders, she found she was actually getting through to him. They were finally able to talk about the changes he'd gone through ever since throwing in his lot—however temporarily—with the impostor Clone Emperor. About the way the dark side hung over his head like a shroud from that point forward. About how his over-reliance on use of the Force for its raw power until recently deafened him to the subtler messages it conveyed.

"What about you?" he said after a while. "You were the Emperor's Hand. Why hasn't your life been dominated by the dark side?"

 _Good_ _question_. Mara shrugged. "Maybe it has. It certainly was from the time Palpatine took me from my home till I got rid of that last command he'd jammed into my mind.

"Though it's funny, somehow. Palpatine never really tried to turn me to the dark side, at least not the way he turned Vader and tried to turn you. Actually, I don't think I was ever really in the dark side at all." She'd never thought of the question from this angle before, but the more she considered it, the surer she was. The Emperor always encouraged her to pursue justice—rough justice, but justice all the same. He taught her to be ruthless, but not cruel; to judge but not to hate. He chided her for her softness, but in the way an indulgent father might chastise a youngling's overactive sweet tooth. He demanded efficiency, but never pushed her to revel in her own power over others.

"But," Luke said, interrupting her ruminations, "everything you were doing was the Emperor's work. If he was on the dark side, shouldn't you have been, too?"

 _Point_. Mara shook her head. "I don't know. But I wasn't." Okay, this was getting a little too personal for Mara's liking. Luke—and to a lesser extent, his sister—had a way of finding his way through cracks in Mara's armor, into corners of her psyche she'd rather not share with anybody. "You're the Jedi Master," she said. "You figure it out."

"I'll work on it." He recognized the deflection, of course, but didn't pursue it. Wise move.

Time for a change of topic. "In the meantime, do those sustained control techniques you taught me work on arm muscles as well as lightsabers?"

* * *

Their first infiltration of the High Tower was hardly a tremendous success. They were traveling up a spiral slideway looking for a command center or comparable information hub when a couple of humanoids in burgundy uniforms opened fire on them from nearby corridors. Mara took one of the strange blue energy blasts in her right shoulder, which felt like a dewback had stomped on it. After she and Luke retreated to some nearby caverns, he put her into a Jedi healing trance to recuperate.

When Mara woke up, five days later, Luke told her he'd been thinking about their conversation in the tunnel.

"You reach any particular conclusions?"

He fixed her with a classic Luke look, one that mixed powerful intensity with almost child-like earnestness. "I know why you didn't turn to the dark side. And why you keep coming up against limits on what you can do through the Force."

"I'm listening," Mara said. She bit off a piece of roast avian—courtesy of the Qom Jha—and tried to make her back comfortable against the rock wall behind her.

Luke still wore that intensely earnest expression. "The essence of the dark side is selfishness. The elevation of yourself and your own desires above everything else."

"Fairly obvious so far."

"The point is that all the time you were serving the Emperor, you were never doing so out of selfish motives. You _were_ serving, even if it _was_ Palpatine and his own selfish ends. And service to others is the essence of being a Jedi."

Mara turned the thought over and shook her head. "No. No, I don't like it. Service to evil is still evil. What you're saying is that doing something wrong isn't really wrong if your motives are good." Even discounting her own actions, she could list off hundreds of examples of people with good motives taking actions with horrible consequences in the service of the Empire or one or another smuggler or criminal organization. "That's nonsense," she said.

"I agree. But that's not what I'm saying. Some of the things you did were certainly wrong; but because you weren't doing them for your own purposes, the acts themselves didn't open you to the dark side."

"I see the difference. But I still don't like it," Mara said, focusing her attention on the half-eaten avian to avoid looking at him.

The conversation meandered for a bit, until Luke brought it back to one of the other major topics which had been hanging mostly unspoken between them during their trek across Nirauan. "You could be a Jedi, Mara. You could be a powerful Jedi."

Mara tried to deflect the suggestion, but quickly found herself divulging the biggest reason she'd resisted finishing her training for so long. "I keep remembering stories about how the last step to becoming a Jedi is usually making some supreme and rather ugly personal sacrifice."

"It's not always as bad as it seems," Luke said, giving his own confrontation with Darth Vader as an example. In the end, he hadn't had to kill his father, after all.

"But you had to be willing to make that sacrifice if necessary. Thanks, but I'm not interested." _You were always the hero_ , _Skywalker_. _You're the one floating above it all_ ; _I'm the one with her boots in the mud and the grit underneath her fingernails_. Mara was content with that—the price of enlightenment was too high for her. _Still_ , _it's good to have someone like you around_.

Luke started up about how she was limiting herself and lacked commitment, which quickly derailed their conversation into a discussion of their respective personal lives. After _that_ unpleasant bit of awkwardness, he acceded to her suggestion that they return to infiltrating the fortress.

But something had changed between them as a result of their conversation. Mara could admit—to herself, at least—that the two of them worked well together, synching up as well as, if not better than, a pair of droid counterparts. Through the Force, they were attuned to each other's physical, mental, and emotional states like a pair of crèche-mates. Now, though, their connection had grown deeper, the rhythm between them stronger and more intense. There were still parts of Mara's psyche she kept shielded from Luke for privacy's sake, and he the same; but whatever she didn't actively block off seeped into him and he into her. Where before she'd had to make a conscious effort to communicate certain feelings to him, and vice versa, now anything she didn't actively hold back would flow out of her into him as naturally as breathing.

For the longest time, even after Wayland, the thought of being so intimately connected to Luke Skywalker of all people would have horrified Mara. Things had changed, though, and she actually found their newly deepened rapport comforting. That was one thought she had no intention of sharing.

Apart from the pleasure of being so closely tied to another person, Mara had practical reasons for appreciating their increased closeness. There was a difficult task before them, and any edge they had might make the difference between success and disastrous failure.

Indeed, when it came time for Mara to split up from Luke and confront the Threateners—they seemed to have a special interest in her particularly—she found herself ruing the limitations of their rapport. They still could not communicate words and images at a distance, the way she and the Emperor had, which would have been really useful just now.

* * *

The Threateners turned out to be the remains of the force Thrawn took with him to the Unknown Regions many years ago, supplemented by more of his species, the Chiss. The fortress, the Hand of Thrawn, was the capital of a vast hegemony covering some two hundred fifty sectors in the Unknown Regions. Thrawn, it seemed, had been very busy during his period of "exile" before he returned to the known galaxy to lead the Imperial Starfleet against the New Republic. The territory he'd carved out dwarfed that still under Imperial control.

Thrawn had left the fortress in the hands of an old crony, Admiral Voss Parck, and former Imperial—and New Republic—fighter ace Baron Soontir Fel. The two men asked Mara to join their little social club—apparently following Thrawn's wishes, which Mara found difficult to reconcile with the way he'd double-crossed her over the _Katana_ fleet deal. In any case, Mara would have none of it, and was compelled to fight her way out of the fortress with the help of Luke and Artoo.

Even after making their escape in a commandeered scout ship, Mara found herself troubled by two aspects of her meeting with Parck and Fel. The first, and more abstract, was their sober insistence that there were dangers lurking in the Unknown Regions, worse than anything the galaxy had yet faced. These were serious, intelligent, principled men, not given to scaring at shadows or indulging in hyperbole. It would have to take something truly dire to convince Fel in particular ever to resume an Imperial uniform.

Second, and more immediate, was Parck's preparation to turn over the resources of Thrawn's shadow empire to the Imperial leadership on Bastion, given the rumors of the Grand Admiral resurfacing in Imperial space. Parck and Fel were honest conscientious men—those running the remains of Palpatine's Empire at the moment were decidedly less so.

The Unknown Regions territories—just like the Mount Tantiss clones—unleashed upon the fragile New Republic would be nothing short of catastrophic. Mara had convinced Luke they should not try to undermine Parck's and Fel's operation, in case Fel's phantom threats weren't phantoms after all. But she knew the two men could not be allowed to put the operation at Bastion's service, either. A solution occurred to her during their escape from the fortress, one she kept tightly shielded from Luke. She wasn't happy about it, but she didn't see any other way out. _I guess it's time to take that last step_.

Mara stashed their ship in a crevasse a kilometer away from the fortress and hidden from it by a ridge. Then she insisted Luke go into a healing trance to recovery from the burns he'd picked up during their escape. She wanted him fully healed for another incursion into the fortress, but having him out of the way for a few hours would also make Mara's next task that much easier.

It took her a while to make the necessary arrangements, after which she positioned herself atop the rock ledge overlooking their stolen shuttle, and settled in to wait. Mara watched the hand-shaped fortress and went through some mental exercises she'd learned during her training as an Imperial agent, more than two decades earlier. Techniques to keep her focused, and to stave off the grief welling up within her.

* * *

Mara waited a few hours for the _Jade's_ _Fire_ to make its arrival, summoned by her beckon call. It was roughly fifteen minutes away by Mara's estimation when she heard Luke call her name—not with her ears, but through the Force.

For a moment, Mara considered refusing to answer, but she didn't want him to worry. _Up here_ , she sent, along with a vague impression of her location.

 _Where are you?_ came the response.

Again, she debated replying. She'd hoped to have this taken care of while he was still in his healing trance. She should have known he'd come out before that, if only to spite her. He had a knack for arriving at the most inconvenient time possible.

Still, there was little point prevaricating now. She sent him instructions on how to make his way up to her. He managed it in about half the time she'd taken to arrive at the ledge, but then again, he was a Jedi Master—and more to the point, he knew what route to take, rather than having to find it on his way up.

"Hello," she said, once he came into view. "How are you feeling?"

"Completely healed. What's going on?" he said. Typical Skywalker, practically radiating concern and earnestness like a beacon.

She wasn't ready to open the floodgates yet, so she deflected the deeper question and pointed out the Hand of Thrawn and updated him about activities in the fortress' hangar. He was anxious Parck might send out a ship, but Mara didn't share his fear—there was no way now that Parck would be able to scramble something in time. In a few minutes, he'd lose any chance he had to get a message out to Bastion. She supposed it was worth the price.

She could feel the protective walls she'd thrown up beginning to crack, the pain starting to seep in. _Keep it together_ , _Mara_. Maybe talking with Luke would distract her. "It's funny, you know. Ironic really. Here we are: the woman who's spent ten years trying to build a new life for herself, and the man who's spent those same ten years rushing madly around trying to save the galaxy from every new threat that reared its ugly head."

"That's us all right," Luke said. "Not sure I see the irony, though." There he was again, so compassionate, so concerned, so utterly sincere.

"The irony is that with the New Republic ready to tear itself apart, you rushed off to save me. Ignoring your self-delegated responsibilities in order to save that one woman and her one life." The cracks were widening, slowly but inexorably. Mara took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, she found she couldn't raise her voice higher than a whisper, "And that one woman, is now the one who has to sacrifice that new life she wanted. To save the New Republic."

Before Luke could ask the obvious question, and the last of Mara's will broke, the Hand of Thrawn's weapons towers opened up, firing green bolts of energy up into the sky. "Looks like you got here just in time."

He took a second to realize the source of the turbolaser fire. "Ranging shots, probably. Trying to gauge the distance," Mara said. "It won't be long now." She could not see the _Jade's_ _Fire_ itself yet, but it couldn't be more than a minute or two away.

He started to speak, but the walls were crumbling, and Mara had to push through while she still had some amount of composure. "It was all your idea, you know. You're the one who wanted so much for me to become a Jedi. Remember?" By the time she got to that last word, she was fighting sobs.

The turbolaser fire from the weapons towers intensified, and Luke angled his head—he hadn't figured out what he was seeing yet. Then he looked at her and sucked in his breath. "Mara. No. Oh no."

A tiny, irreverent corner of Mara's mind still operating apart from her grief wanted to mock the expression of pathetically compassionate sorrow on his face. For the rest of her, the walls now had gaping holes and the grief was spilling through. She felt tears running freely down her cheeks. "It had to be done. It was the only way to keep them from taking all of this and handing it to Bastion. The only way."

She felt his sudden turmoil, and it didn't take mind reading to figure out what he was thinking. "Don't. Please, don't," she said, now feeling utterly weary. "It's my sacrifice, don't you see? The final sacrifice every Jedi has to go through.

"There's nothing you can do. Nothing at all." Even as she said it, Mara realized that it wasn't strictly true. There was nothing he could do to stop the _Jade's Fire_ , no way to prevent what was to come, but his presence was a comfort to her, which was why a moment earlier, she'd slipped her hand into his.

She could tell he wanted to argue, wanted to be the big Jedi hero and save the day … even if it meant imposing his own solutions onto others. And the old Luke—the one she'd watched for nine years slipping dangerously close to the abyss—almost certainly would have tried. But it seemed his recent epiphany really had taken hold somewhere deep in his psyche. And so, Mara sensed, despite his wishes, he accepted her choice, and all the consequences thereof.

He held her as she cried, and shook, and grieved the loss of her ship—the one thing left that truly was _hers_ , the thing that meant if she ever needed an out, an escape, to get away from it all, she could, just like that. He held her, and he spoke to her, empty words whose meaning came more from their tone than their content.

By the time the _Jade's Fire_ made its final plunge into the Hand of Thrawn's hangar and erupted in a massive fireball, her eyes had run dry, though her pain was no less. Luke continued to hold her, and she held him, as the hangar and the remains of the _Jade's_ _Fire_ burned.

After what felt like a very long time, Mara's pain subsided. It was not gone, but as with the pain she'd felt at the Emperor's death, it receded to a level where she could once again function. Now, too, Mara had a mission, and a more noble one this time than exacting revenge against the one who'd turned her life upside down.

They'd previously agreed to infiltrate the fortress one more time and have Artoo make copies of the information detailing the power bloc Parck and Fel were sitting on here, in case it was someday used against the New Republic. When Mara spoke, her voice was hoarse, but steady. "We'd better go. They're going to be fighting that fire for a while. This is probably our best chance to sneak back in."

As they set about their third infiltration, it occurred to Mara that by crashing the _Jade's Fire_ into the Hand of Thrawn's hangar, she had now done consciously what she'd unknowingly done when she saved Luke's life all those years ago on Poln Major—traded away the life she'd built for the greater good. What did that say about her life? She wasn't sure; but it didn't escape her notice that in so many instances, when she came to a turning point, Luke Skywalker played a pivotal role.

* * *

This was turning out to be a day for ironies, Mara reflected, not bitterly, but with a profound feeling of resignation. They'd managed to infiltrate their way into a secret room of the fortress, and set up Artoo to pull the data on the Unknown Regions territory, only to be jumped by a pair of sentinel droids armed with twin blaster pistols and armored with lightsaber-negating cortosis ore. Now she and Luke stood back to back, their feet tangled in trip cords, batting away blaster bolts as best they could. So far they were holding their own, barely. It couldn't last.

Mara was tiring too quickly. Her only chance was to throw her lightsaber and hope to take out the two blasters held by the sentinel in front of her. There was no way she could do so without getting hit herself, of course; Mara had already accepted that she would not be walking out of this confrontation alive. But this way, she would die giving Luke a chance to live, and to complete the mission. There was still the other sentinel droid to deal with, but he was the Jedi Master; with only one sentinel droid to deal with, and no need to worry about his back, he should be able to fight his way clear.

 _So this is how it ends_ , _Skywalker_ , _just as it began_ — _with me saving your skin_.

Another irony: as she and Luke fought for their lives in this underground chamber, their already increased connection to each other through the Force had blossomed immensely, until they saw into the depths of each other's innermost souls. Suddenly, Mara knew Luke Skywalker at the core of who he was, and he, in turn, knew Mara Jade. The intimacy went beyond anything Mara had ever imagined possible. And she welcomed it.

Ever since the Emperor's death—no, for as long as she could remember—Mara had avoided personal connections, not letting anyone, not Faughn, not even Karrde, get too close. If only she'd known. But now there was no time for regret, and Mara supposed she should be grateful to have had this revelation at all, even if it came at the end of her life. In her mind she heard Luke—she thought it was Luke—try to dissuade her; but as always, it was her choice to make, and the only option she had to save him, and perhaps the Republic as well. Time for another sacrifice.

And then …

Mara later had to admit that, just like on Myrkr, as so many other times, it was Artoo-Detoo who saved the day. Oh, his little ploy with the arc welder only distracted the one sentinel droid for a matter of seconds, but it was enough time for Mara to take out its blasters without getting shot, and then cut a circle in the stone wall of the chamber. Under pressure from the lake on the wall's other side, Mara's make-shift missile hit the sentinel with enough force to punch through the hull of a Star Destroyer. Luke took out the other in the resulting deluge, after getting Mara and Artoo to relative safety.

Of course, that left them with the problem of the lake emptying itself into the room, after it filled up the previous chamber. Eventually, Luke hit upon the idea of blowing the fusion generator in the room next door, thus creating a tidal wave strong enough to—they hoped—burst open the passageway they'd come through and give them a fairly straight shot back to dry land. It was a ludicrously dangerous plan, but at this point it was their best chance for survival.

In those desperate minutes before Luke came up with the scheme, the two of them shared a very personal moment; the detached, irreverent piece of Mara's mind noted that this seemed to be the mission for such moments.

"Mara … will you marry me?"

"You mean if we get out of here alive?"

"I mean regardless."

Mara looked at the man whose life she'd saved so many times on so many different planets. And he had saved her—not just her physical existence, though he'd done that as well, but also saved her from a life of never having forged a true and meaningful connection with another person. "Yes. I will."

* * *

Getting out of the fortress proved a tricky operation, not that Mara expected anything less. They couldn't just hold their breath the whole way, so Luke put Mara into a Jedi healing trance and himself into a partial trance, which would allow them to ride the shockwave they were about to set off back to the caverns they'd originally entered through.

Mara awoke with the sound of the pre-agreed phrase to bring her out of the trance ringing in her ears and in her mind, "I love you, Mara."

She opened her eyes and blinked away the water which had collected around them. She was floating in a waist deep pool and looking up into his face, a face which had looked so young and innocent long ago on Poln Major, and now, a mere eighteen years later, looked so mature and wise. Funny how much could change in a space of less than two decades. "Hi," she said. "I see we made it." She grabbed his arm, and with much effort on her part and no little assistance from him, pulled herself to her feet.

Once she was upright, Luke wrapped her up in his arms, and held her as if he never meant to let go. "Yes," was all he said aloud, but with their newly enhanced connection, Mara could hear much of what he left unsaid. He'd been frightened for her. Terrified. He'd lost hold of her in the process of getting them out of the secret section of the fortress, and for a few panicked moments, he thought she hadn't made it. Now she felt his overwhelming relief and joy at having her back with him, and the thought that they could truly be together forever.

"Yes. Forever." Once Mara could never have imagined saying such words. Now they came to her as naturally as breathing. And then she kissed him.

* * *

After their escape from the flooding chamber, getting off Nirauan was almost trivial. Artoo, it turned out, had only gotten a sketchy overview of the Unknown Regions data before they were interrupted by the sentinel droids. He had, however, turned up something even better: a copy of the Caamas Document, the one text in the galaxy which might have a hope of quelling the New Republic's current crisis.

They learned later that the returned Grand Admiral Thrawn had been exposed as a hoax, which should make Parck think twice about contacting Bastion. Mara and Luke had actually found a clone of Thrawn growing in that secret underground section of the fortress … it died when its Spaarti cloning cylinder flooded.

Between the Caamas Document and the revelation that much of the tensions in the New Republic over the past few months had been quietly stoked by a rogue Imperial element, it looked like the galaxy could calm back down to its usual petty squabbles and pointless rivalries. Hardly an ideal arrangement, but better than civil war.

Which meant there was plenty of time to think about Mara and Luke. At no point in her life had Mara ever seriously considered getting married, and to Luke Skywalker, of all people. But she'd meant it when she accepted his proposal as the water was rushing in and it seemed likely they were going to die, and she still meant it now.

Their first order of business, however, was to take their stolen ship to the nearest New Republic base on Adumar. Mara had been stuck on Nirauan for more than two weeks, and was in desperate need of a shower, a change of clothes, and food that wasn't ration bars, none of which were to be found aboard the ship.

The base administrator, a dour-looking Pau'an, was downright ecstatic at the opportunity to be of help to the legendary Luke Skywalker, and practically gushed about how excited she was to tell her cousin all about it. Mara was bemused both by the administrator's enthusiasm, and by Luke's obvious embarrassment.

The rest of the base staff they met were hardly less avid, and practically fell all over themselves to provide Luke—and by extension, Artoo and Mara—whatever supplies and assistance they needed. Mara got her shower, and her change of clothes, and a truly excellent sampling of Adumari cuisine. The staff offered them a replacement ship, as well, but a quick inspection revealed all the couriers they had to hand had significantly slower hyperdrive engines than the Hand of Thrawn's scout.

So, while Luke placed a holocom call to Coruscant, informing them of the Caamas Document's discovery, Mara spent the better part of an hour with two of the base's techs installing a New Republic transponder and recognition codes on the ship. As time was of the essence, and they were several days out from Coruscant at top speed, Mara and Luke regretfully declined the base staff's offer to stay overnight. After saying their goodbyes—and stowing some of the more portable Adumari foodstuffs aboard the ship—they took off after less than half a day on the planet.

* * *

They did not make love on the journey back to Coruscant. Mara brought up the idea their first night out from Adumar; melding emotions with Luke on Nirauan had awakened certain other, seldom felt desires within her. Luke, ever the romantic, objected to the suggestion of consummating their relationship in a dingy Imperial scout vessel. Mara was disappointed by his refusal, but willing to go along with it—one of the lessons of Palpatine's training she still appreciated was the value of patience and self-control. She could wait.

And besides, the anticipation could be rewarding all of its own. With this in mind, Mara took to teasing Luke over the course of the trip, throwing in the occasional suggestive comment or body movement.

Luke got his revenge on her the second morning when he contrived to spill Adumari chlethian sauce all over his shirt and undershirt, and had to spend the next two hours—which he of course used to run through his daily physical exercises, and make some repairs to an overhead console, which necessitated a great deal of stretching—bare to the waist while Artoo worked on getting the garments cleaned off. Mara had been trained to avoid distractions of all kinds, but the sight made her feel like a thirteen year old girl on her first tour through one of Coruscant's pleasure districts. It was all she could do to keep her appreciative glances surreptitious and discreet. By the Force, he really _did_ keep in shape. At one point, he came up and "accidentally" bumped into her, so that for a moment Mara's face was in direct contact with the muscles of his chest, her nose sucking in the sweaty scent of him. Then he laughed it off and went to the back of the scout to check on Artoo. It took Mara a full fifteen seconds to get her heartbeat back to a normal rhythm.

She didn't stop teasing him, though; not at all.

On the journey, she and Luke exercised, played sabacc and Dejarik, worked on honing Mara's newly enhanced Force skills, and checked in periodically with Leia, and Han, and Karrde. But mostly, they talked. By unspoken agreement—not that they needed words to communicate so much any more—they avoided talking about the future; there would be time for that soon enough. Instead, they talked about the past. Even having seen into the heart of each other's being, they found there was still much they didn't know, and they were eager to learn.

They talked about their upbringings: Luke, growing up on a Tatooine moisture farm; Mara, trained as an assassin by the Emperor's servants. They talked about their struggles: Luke confronting his father, rebuilding the Jedi Order, worrying that he wasn't a good enough Jedi mentor to his students, and especially his sister, niece, and nephews; Mara, coming to terms with the fact that the first 26 years of her life had been a lie, trying to find her place in the galaxy when she'd finally put the Emperor's Hand behind her, and all while pushing the people around her away without quite consciously realizing it. And they talked about the many times their paths had crossed before, the many encounters which led them to this new unity.

They laughed over those early days on Myrkr, and aboard the _Chimera_ , and on Wayland, what with Mara's numerous threats to kill him and all. But they also explored their own changing feelings and attitudes over the course of their relationship, finding little connections they'd never discussed before.

"I still can't believe it took me so long to realize it was you, Leia, Han, and Chewie backing up LaRone's unit on Shelkonwa. LaRone even mentioned Chewie by name at one point."

"I expect you had other things on your mind at the time," Luke said, to which Mara gestured her assent. A little matter of a corrupt sector governor scheming to secede from the Empire.

"All the same," she said, "I should have worked it out sooner. Retaining that kind of data and putting it together with new information was part of my job as an Imperial agent, and I was good at it, too."

Luke shrugged, as if to say that even elite Imperial agents could sometimes miss things. "So when _did_ you put it together?"

"I don't know any more," Mara said. "Some time when I was on Coruscant on Smuggler's Alliance business. A stray comment or something I saw reminded me of Shelkonwa, and I got suspicious. I spent an hour or so rooting through the archives of declassified Rebel Alliance missions, and there it was. When I saw all your names and the dates on the Shelkonwa document, I leaned back from my computer terminal and laughed so hard I spooked the archivists."

"I can just picture it," Luke said, with a small chuckle of his own.

Mara grew contemplative, lacing her fingers under her chin and leaning forward to inspect the network of scratches and scrapes in her dinner tray. "It's as well I didn't figure it out sooner," she said. "For the first few years, I was beating myself up just knowing I saved you from those mercenaries on Poln Major. If I'd realized I could have captured the entire crew with a simple command on Shelkonwa, _and_ completed my mission there …" She shook her head, imagining what that knowledge would have done to her.

"If it helps, any," Luke said, "we would have escaped. We always escape, some way or other."

Mara barked a laugh. "Yes, I suppose you—we—do. Still," she added, after a moment's reflection, "it's funny to think how often our lives have intersected, even before Myrkr."

"Yeah. If I didn't know better, I'd suggest it was fate at work."

This provoked Mara to lift her head and look at him pointedly. " _Do_ you know better?"

"I suppose not," he said thoughtfully. "To an extent, I guess I know that's exactly what's been happening. The Force has obviously been throwing us together—or nearly together—for most of our adult lives. But I don't think even the Force knew for what purpose. We were probably meant to be allies all along—all those times we found ourselves working on the same side. But this," he brushed her mind, gentle as a caress, "I think this is something more. Something we created. It was always a possibility, but we're the ones who made it happen."

Mara ducked her head and smiled. "We did, didn't we? How about that?"

* * *

Another time, Mara remarked, "You never did tell me what prompted you to bring up Poln Major back when we were tramping through the forest on Wayland."

Luke shrugged. "Another Jedi hunch, I guess. Truthfully, I wasn't too sure myself what I was saying and how advisable it was."

"You didn't really think I'd kill you, did you?"

"By that point? I was pretty sure you wouldn't. But, well, I'd been wrong before." He gave an easy grin, and then his face sobered. "More seriously, I was worried about the effect it would have on you. I knew half-consciously you were approaching some sort of turning point, but I had no idea whether dredging up those old memories would push you in the right direction, or the wrong one."

"You weren't to know C'baoth had a clone of you under his control," Mara observed.

"No," Luke said, a bit of humor returning to his voice, "I think that one caught us all by surprise."

"It certainly did me," Mara said, rubbing her wrists absently.

"Do you think I made the right decision in bringing it up when I did?"

Mara thought back to that multi-day trek through the Wayland jungle. So many things had been going through her mind at the time. "I don't know," she said at last, and shrugged. "I did the right thing in the end, so I suppose you probably did. Chalk it up as another point for Jedi hunches, like you said."

Although they did not have sex, they were both happy to snuggle up, which was just as well, given the cramped accommodations aboard the scout ship. Mara, who had slept alone most of her life, was surprised at how easily she adjusted to having another body sleeping next to her. It was not quite the same as discovering true, intimate human connection for the first time, but it was very pleasant. Granted, whenever Luke got out of bed or even just stirred too much in his sleep, he set off Mara's combat reflexes and snapped her to full consciousness. That was something she would have to work on, but she thought she would enjoy doing so.

* * *

By the time they got to Coruscant, Leia, Han, Karrde, Lando, and damn near everyone else in the New Republic was there ahead of them. There was, of course, a huge fanfare surrounding the discovery of the Caamas Document, with many tedious and self important speeches proclaiming the Republic's profound gratitude. Most of the credit went to Luke, which Mara knew made him uncomfortable, but at her insistence he went along with it. "I'll get my day in the spotlight soon enough," she told him. "Besides, everybody already expects you and Artoo to be the heroes; explaining my role will be too complicated, and a distraction from the document's content. That's the most important thing right now."

The first thing they did after escaping the dignitaries and press corps was snag a private lunch in the Tornich Skymall café with Leia and Han. The place had been a favorite of Mara's during Palpatine's reign, and despite numerous changes in staff, ownership, and interior design, it still served some of the best karkan ribenes in the Core Worlds.

They spent the first hour or so listening to Leia's and Han's stories of their recent adventures. Mara and Luke still hadn't decided how much to let out about Parck, Fel, and the Hand of Thrawn, so for the moment they said nothing, turning the conversation away whenever one of the others asked a probing question. Leia caught on quickly, and though she obviously wasn't happy about it, she didn't press the point. Han took a little longer to realize they weren't talking, and he definitely wasn't happy, but with a bit of persuading from his wife and brother-in-law, he grudgingly let the topic drop, for the time being.

There was still plenty to talk about from his and Leia's escapades, what with encountering a community of Fel clones on Pakrik Minor, and Han meeting the fake Thrawn on Bastion while Leia met with Admiral Pellaeon to open negotiations on the peace treaty, and then both of them taking on a trio of Star Destroyers over Bothawui.

Finally, Han came back to his encounter with the Thrawn impersonator. "The likeness was so close," he said, shaking his head in what might have been admiration, "you wouldn't believe."

Mara and Luke exchanged a glance, thinking back to the clone they'd found in the Nirauan fortress, and both chuckled.

"Okay, what is it with you two?" Han said, putting down his cutlery. "You've been sniggering at each other like this all through lunch. Care to let us in on the joke?"

"Isn't it obvious, Han?" Leia said, with a bemused smile. "They're getting married."

Han Solo's jaw dropped open in a satisfyingly comical expression, and Mara had to work hard to suppress her mirth at the sight.

"Told you she'd figure it out," Luke said.

"Did you hear me disagreeing?"

Once Han got over his initial shock, both he and Leia offered congratulations. After the flurry of obligatory hugs, kisses and well wishes, they sat back down at their places, half-eaten meals forgotten, Leia and Han leaning forward with renewed interest.

Leia got in the first question, "Who else have you told?"

"No one," Luke said. "You're the first to know."

"What?" Han looked between the two of them. "You haven't told Karrde yet?"

"Luke won the chance roll," Mara said, giving him a mock glare. "He picked blue. I should have known better than to bet against a Jedi."

Luke put on a look of such cherubic innocence that Mara again had to stifle a laugh.

"Last I checked, Karrde was done reorganizing the galaxy's intelligence community for the day," Han said. "Would you like to call him up and have him join us?"

Mara shook her head. "I'm going to tell him myself, in private. It's not like with the two of you—Karrde is my boss, as well as my friend; I'm technically breaking contract by leaving his organization."

"Surely Karrde will understand," Leia said. "Won't he?"

"He will, but he's still losing his second in command, a valuable employee. That's going to have repercussions for his organization, which Karrde will have to sort out."

Leia and Han both nodded. Each, in their own way, had experience dealing with the intricacies involved in coordinating networks of sentient beings, and could appreciate the difficulty a sudden upset to the current structure of things would bring.

"We're not making a general announcement yet, either," Luke said. "Just a few family members and close friends at this point. We don't want to divert people's attention from the peace treaty or the Caamas Document."

"How long do you mean to wait before going public?"

"We haven't decided yet. No more than a month, at most. We want to have the wedding this summer."

Mara saw Leia's eyes light up at mention of the wedding, and she mentally chastised Luke for opening up that particular brinarian's nest. Fortunately, Han came to their rescue, though he probably didn't realize it. "A summer wedding," he said. "Very wise. Doesn't give the detractors enough time to get really entrenched, or the over-enthusiastic supporters enough time to come up with something too ridiculous."

"That was our thought," Mara said. "Best to get the whole thing settled as quickly as possible, and present the galaxy with a done deal."

"There'll still be plenty of carping," Leia mused, "but most beings are less likely to get worked up over something that's already happened than something that's going to happen. Have you thought about—?"

"We haven't," Luke said. "We wanted to give ourselves a couple of days' rest before throwing ourselves into the gritty details of arranging the ceremony, drawing up guest lists, planning a honeymoon …"

 _Good one_ , Mara sent to him. It wouldn't take the heat off them for long, she knew, but she could see Luke's gambit had won them a reprieve.

"And after the honeymoon?" Leia said. "Have thought about that?"

"Not much," Luke said with a cheerful half-shrug. "Why? Are you afraid we're planning to run off into the great unknown, never to be seen again?"

Mara sent him a warning thought; that was a little too close to mentioning what they'd learned about the Unknown Regions. They hadn't decided what they were going to do about that, either, but Mara, for one, would not be content just to sit back and let Parck, Fel, and their people deal with whatever was out there.

Luke sent back reassurance. This wasn't about the Unknown Regions, not really.

"A little bit," Leia said, oblivious to the mental exchange. "There is precedent."

"But I was working for Karrde then," Mara said. "And anyway, I came back, didn't I?"

Luke looked rueful. "I think she's referring to me."

Oh really? Apparently their catch up sessions on the way back from Nirauan hadn't covered everything. Mara supposed that was just as well—it meant there were still new things to discover about him.

"You, and to the fact that the old Jedi Masters seem to have made a habit of going off on their own to live out their lives as hermits at some point," Leia said.

"That was partially because of Palpatine's declaration of the Galactic Empire and the Jedi purge," Luke said.

"But only partially."

"Doesn't matter," Mara said. "That was the old Jedi, we're something new."

"We will be going out into the galaxy," Luke put in, "just as we always have. Just as you always have. We're needed out there, not just on Coruscant and Yavin Four. But we will come back. We'll always come back."

Han held up his snifter of Corellian brandy. "To always coming back."

Mara exchanged a look with Leia and with Luke. Then, in unison they all raised their respective glasses and dutifully repeated, "To always coming back."

* * *

A few months later, and two kilometers away, Mara stood facing Luke on a floating platform overgrown with grass and flowers, one of a dozen to be found in the vast open area which comprised the Jedi Headquarters' Telipar Garden.

He wore dark brown Jedi robes over a long yellow tunic with an elaborate ruff at the throat, and matching pants. In his left hand—the only one still made of flesh—he held one half of a round, blue stone; a "bonding stone," according to Tionne. Mara was dressed the same, only her pants and tunic were red, and she held her half-stone in her right hand.

Between them stood Kam Solusar, another ex-Imperial whom Luke had helped guide back to the light, and who had been Luke's very first student recruited to his academy on Yavin Four. Around them were gathered nearly forty up-and-coming Jedi, including most of the surviving members of that original class at the _praxeum_.

The formal ceremony they both dreaded was still several days away. But this was their ceremony, cobbled together mostly from Tionne's research into old Jedi traditions. They still were not sure what the status of marriage had been in the Jedi Order of old, let alone what a wedding ceremony might have looked like, but this was what they'd come up with.

Mara knew Luke still had misgivings about whether the ceremony was truly in the spirit of the old Jedi. But that was Luke, still looking to the Jedi Order's past to guide their future. For her own part, Mara was unreservedly pleased about the ceremony. They were establishing new traditions, and this struck her as a good one.

Kam gave the invocation: "Welcome my brother and sister Jedi. Today we have a great honor to celebrate the coming together of Mara Jade and our Master, Luke Skywalker. Their bond with one another was forged through the Force and strengthened by it, so that their efforts together could be stronger than the efforts of any two other Jedi.

"It was once thought that emotional attachments would make a Jedi vulnerable, but these two so complete each other that only strength will flow from this union."

Mara smiled as she spoke her part and used the Force to send the stone floating from her hand towards Luke. "When I first met Luke, I was under compulsion to kill him. Generally not a good sign for a lasting relationship," she said. No need to complicate things by bringing up saving his life in their almost-meeting on Poln Major. "Such was his courage that he did not run," she continued, "and did not strike me. He accepted me, as no one else had done before." It had taken her ages to come up with those four lines. How to summarize this man, the man she loved, in such a brief span of words? There was so much she had left out, the many times he came to her rescue, in body and in spirit, the many gifts he had given her, the many trials they'd seen each other through. In the end, there was no way she could parse it down to a few simple sentences. All she could do was point to the totality of her love for him. And having done so, she found it was enough.

Luke also used the Force to float his stone towards Mara as he spoke. "There was a sense to Mara, when I met her, that would not let me fear her, though countless others have learned that not fearing her can be trouble." Was that a reference to Poln Major? His thoughts were guarded, and she could not read the answer from them. "The Force brought us together, and kept bringing us together until neither of us could deny our destiny to be together forever."

A moment after he spoke that final word, the two stone pieces met with a soft click. The next moment, there was a single, whole stone, hovering a few centimeters above Kam's open palm, exactly between Mara and Luke.

"Let no one doubt the wisdom of the Force," Kam said. "May the Force always be with you both and in your life together." He took the bonding stone in his hand and held it aloft, as if inviting the heavens above to witness.

With that, the assembled Jedi activated their lightsabers and held them up in salute, and Mara and Luke—now wedded in the eyes of the Jedi, if not yet of the Republic and galaxy at large—walked back along the flower-laden platform under a canopy of glowing light. At one point, Mara saw Luke's gaze shift to a nearby platform. Some of the attending Jedi were gathered on the platforms to either side, but Luke didn't appear to be focusing on any of them.

"Your father?" Mara murmured, so that only he would be able to hear.

"And others," a shadow passed across his face. "So many gone."

"Somebody once told me 'those who rejoin the Force are never truly gone,'" Mara observed. "Do they approve?"

"Oh yes," he said, his face clearing, and gave her a private little smile, just between the two of them, "they approve."

"Well," she said, feeling a bemused smile of her own, "I suppose that's good to know."

And they walked arm in arm, off the platform, and into a whole new life once again.

To be continued …


End file.
